 Well, let's begin, but be welcome everybody. Welcome to the Future Trends Forum. I'm really delighted to see you today We have a terrific guest who is covering a great topic, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation I'm really really delighted to welcome Professor Ian O'Burn. He's an associate professor in Literacy Education the College of Charleston And one of the things that he's been working on for quite some time has been a great newsletter called digitally literate If you look on the bottom left of the screen, there's a kind of mustard-colored button and you can sign up for it I strongly recommend it. It's free, comes out frequently, has a lot of great stuff And so that's one reason I wanted to host him But the other reason is that he's been working with a colleague on the idea of how to use Educational technology including social media for the social good And this is a very powerful idea And it's one that we've kind of touched on over the years as we become both more reliant on social media and more anxious about social media As especially over the past two years we've been using educational technology more and more But at the same time there's a rising chorus of criticisms about educational technology So how can we turn these technologies not to evil of various forms, not to neutrality But something that's actually positive for our learners, positive for society as a whole. That's the topic of today's conversation And I would like to, if I can, hit the right button and bring Professor O'Burn up on stage. And as we talk, please keep in mind All the questions and thoughts you have, any comments you have, any howls of outrage, any examples, any cries of support And welcome, welcome to Professor O'Burn Thanks for having me, Brian. Is the mic working? The camera's working and everything's going? Well, so far, unless I'm making a terrible error and I'm assuming it won't work that fast Thank you so much for joining us. I'm really, really grateful for your time No worries. Thanks for having me. I'm appreciative to you. I'm appreciative to all the people that are here today You know, I want to start by thanking you all for your attendance today We, you have a lot on your plate You know, we're all dealing with things in our own social lives, our own personal lives, professional lives There's a lot that's occupying our thoughts. So Just to begin with From a place of grace and thanks and you know, just appreciative for you and for you taking a little bit of time to think about this I see a lot of friends that are out there in these spaces. And so I'm appreciative to you I'm interested to have a little discussion today to think about technology in our lives. What works? What doesn't work? How we might identify places for To do things a little bit better than we currently are Well said, well said. Thank you very much. That's a very, very gracious introduction We we have a habit of asking people to introduce themselves By giving a little sample of their biography in the future. That is what are you going to be working on for the next year I mean, so that can be material like what kind of projects what kind of stuff But also what ideas are uppermost in your mind looking ahead for the rest of 2022? Yeah, absolutely um, so a number of things are changing. So I'm currently a Professor of literacy and education at college of charleston. I've done a lot as you mentioned I put out a regular newsletter thinking about uh, technology um, my one of my Projects over the last I would say three. That's a lie seven years covid years The last seven eight years of my life Has been this this challenge that a lot of the internet and a lot of the technologies that we use has become largely Unintelligible and so I've been working to try and make this a little bit more accessible a little bit more approachable for the average user That's the purpose of the newsletter and other things And so one of my projects upcoming is Professionally, I'm taking over the teaching fellows at my institution. So it's a oh, wow. Yeah, it's basically an incentive I think it's in about 40 or 42 states to bring more teachers In into the field Obviously a very big pain point especially right now um, but then uh, one of the things that I'm doing for my own edification is I have a plan to Erase myself from the internet So I spent all this time building up my online presence And so one of the things no one else knows this other than my neighbor is I basically am trying to figure out How do I remove myself from the internet? So I I asked one of my neighbors works for defense industry and and cyber forensics and stuff and so that this is the book So I've been working my way through and my plan is to Slowly erase myself from the internet and see what that takes and is it possible and Is it worth it? So it's you know I think one of the challenges is as we think through social media as we think about digital technologies and these digital practices in our lives is You know, we we always focus on having As real of a presence as possible and as much information as possible But some of the the concern that I have is that um, we know that our our you know Businesses and governments and other entities are slurping up our data. We know that people have files set up on us and so We need to and we've heard this chorus cry for the last year or two We need to be more informed about these tools and practices and our behaviors And be a little bit more selective. So i'm trying to go beyond the delete facebook movement and try and think about Okay, how do we really think about where I am online and how do I try to negotiate? You know those spaces or those those torrents of information and still be a human being still be a parent Still be a colleague. So Trying to balance all that So this might become a kind of last known photograph of you This is the end. Well, I've always been you know, I've been very um people like hyper visible you know I've had a couple discussions with with hyper visible and everything You know, there are a couple people that as soon as they write something I immediately get it out on my newsletter and online and it and it is I feel like they're writing things that are written about like 10 minutes in the future and so You know when I've had discussions we had them on a podcast and I said, you know Can I share your your your avatar and stuff like that? I was like, no I'm making these decisions about how what information I've put out there about myself. And so I've been Very intrigued by that and I think that there's a lot to learn Um, you know and and not just assume that we need to give Up everything about ourselves Wow, that's a that's a fascinating extremity. Um, and I would As far as I can love to follow and see how that goes And you and I have had a couple discussions You know via email after the newsletters about the value of a tool like facebook You know and and I I come and go With my my use or or you know the value I see in facebook I might come to the point that I completely delete it. I have Huge questions about privacy and security and what's happening there We know that you know and we could talk about all those But i'm wondering if the you know The delete facebook Option is the right one for me because I do get a lot of benefit from it A lot of consternation in my life, but I also get some benefit Hmm well there's uh in the chat george station says he still has his google plus archives. Yeah, george Yeah, george, um, where are you right now on this delete facebook movement? I know that you're in and out george and I have had discussions about hyper visible Um, you know, there's a couple people that I routinely look at and try to figure out Okay, if they're leaving and I might leave am I leaving as well? well, um if George if you're up if your bandwidth is up for it then and your situation is up for it. I could beam you on stage um, let me know and if not, I can definitely share the uh, uh, Whatever you write in text, uh, how hepner Chimes in much as I hate facebook messenger is the only way to chat with some folks and that's That's one personally. That's one reason. I still use it is there's there's an enormous number of people on facebook that just Won't connect with me in any other way I mean Yeah, I agree with you that the the challenge is like when I get involved in new research initiatives or new projects facebook becomes like the The the main vehicle. So, uh, one of the things that I've done Uh, that will you know, I was one of the initial founders of the higher ed learning collective on facebook There's about 40 000 people It started with you know, uh, a text a facebook messenger post to like 10 of us like, hey, would you be interested? and you know, and then it Turned into this other entity and a lot of our discussions were through facebook messenger You know, I there's been a lot of good and some bad coming out from that group from that experience You know, I I still use messenger a lot for a lot of activities um you know, but then it's uh recently in april my father passed away and it was fascinating to see The the connections with people that he grew up with and sharing photos and then all of a sudden you see the underbelly of facebook Where you see these You know groups of people that grew up in a specific area almost like what I guess what mark zuckerberg wanted to happen You know that they were sharing photos of them growing up in in paterson new jersey And and people are inviting me and sharing Remembrances of my father and pictures of him growing up and my grandfather things I'd never ever seen before And so I'm thankful for that But is it is it is it worth all the concerns? That's that's the question is the balance. Well, uh, george wants to chime in on this But he asks to to circle back to that later in this hour So I'm I'm I'm happy to do that I'm happy to do that I was really struck by your presentation and I see your presentations. It's one by you and a co-author Who who we haven't mentioned. Can you just quickly mention your co-author and Give her a shout out. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I'm a member of a steam research group here at the college of charleston I have other projects that I work in I'm I'm involved in a computational thinking grant You know, we're thinking about computational thinking and embedding coding and programming into k-12 schools The steam research team we investigate divergent thinking creativity 3d printing AR VR All sorts of fun intersections of what we could and should be doing in our classrooms One of our latest pubs as a research group. We've been looking at transdisciplinarity And not interdisciplinarity, but basically Looking across math and music and trying to figure out what really lives in between those spaces and pull it out And use it in our classrooms and one of the members of our group, uh, dr. Melissa negros Has been very interested in social good and trying to make sense of what social good looks like social good You know One of the things that we had in the session is we had people identify or define. What does social good mean? That is a An interesting discussion to have especially with a bunch of academics and educators and human beings. What does social good mean? In our current polarized society, it's very interesting to think about what social good means for different populations One of the benefits is that Social good is relatively easy to make sense of right now the UNESCO basically put out The the education for sustainable development piece and they identify these SDGs sustainable Developing goals and so if you look online for that you can see a lot of components But we notice that a lot of our institutions of higher ed are Talking about social good, but the appropriate term that we see sometimes is sustainable good or sustainability So my institution we have a sustainability initiative It's interesting because we often start by defining what is sustainability and we can never agree but this idea is you know how A lot of this for me and it originates with the UN And the the transforming our world report the 23 agenda Which basically looks at ways to address people the planet prosperity different economic social environmental goals that we could have So you've got the so you have the SDGs and I just in my work I hear a lot more of that around the world and just less and less of that in the us um, so your your collaborator and you got together and you And you developed this presentation which you recently gave And it's a it's a fascinating presentation from from what I can tell you begin by exploring what is social good And then you focus on one technology in particular Or one practice rather or one form which is badging And I I'm I'm I'm fascinated first What kind of conversation came up when when if you just say a bit more about What does it mean when when education pursues a social good? What are other ideas were were up in the air for that? Absolutely Um, so one of the things so one of the ways that we address this is we're talking to pre-service teachers So we're talking about people talking to individuals that want to go into k-12 education But honestly this worked for this works for colleagues of mine in higher ed And what we do is we focus on Having them develop teaching and learning materials focus on project-based learning fundamentals So project-based learning is student inquiry based learning. It's Very open-ended. It's connected to the community There should be a public deliverable And so what we have our students do is they develop a unit plan a longer block of instruction And then within that unit plan they take some time to think about Project-based learning tenants. Is this something that students will care about? Is this something that is local and or global? In connections and output and outreach How would this connect with the community? So they basically unpack all of that And then what we've been doing is what dr. Negros has been doing has been tying this to the sdgs And so basically making explicit Here is an sdg. So, you know instead of you know an arbitrary You know topic or an area of concern for our students to focus their block of instruction They could focus on climate action. They could focus on You know Affordable clean energy they could focus on poverty or zero hunger or health Um, they could focus on gender equality So topics that are going to be of high need high interest to students, but then also high need and high interest to Um, you know that the ultimate schools that they that they work in um that in and of itself is Relatively easy to accomplish the the challenge is Um, at least for our pre-service teachers is they have a certain way of expecting that we do school Um, and there's this there's this mentality of okay You as the teacher the instructor the professor you talk we listen we basically Regurgitate that information over on a quiz or a paper stuff like that So part of it is breaking that down Um, and indicating that we're all experts in this learning commons in this learning community um Once they get to that point then It's a little bit easier to identify. Okay. What is of importance to your students? And what would you like to teach when you finally get out there becomes a little bit easier to make that happen? There are larger discussions about scripted curriculum in schools and and Parent groups and PTAs and other groups that want your child to have these discussions or not There are larger discussions about do you know the will your school believe in science or CRT or culturally sustaining pedagogy and all of those But we believe that it's important to have our students leave our program Being able to go out into any environment and best suit the needs of their students Um There in order to make this happen. There's a lot of different ways You know, there are ways to be synchronous and asynchronous in the discussions one of My favorite tools that you you mentioned is badges I've done a lot of work in the past And actually i'm helping an institution now roll out a badge initiative for college and career readiness. It's um High school kids getting ready to go to an institution they're getting some Onboarding for lack of a better term some coursework before they go to higher ed thinking about applying for college and loans and being a digital citizen all the stuff that we wish that students would get from K12 through higher ed Recognizing that and badging it And the nice thing about a badge is basically We clear out space for different learning pathways. And so You know all of us on this call We've had different journeys that brought us to this moment We could not sit down and say to 7th grade ian obern or 12th grade ian obern if you do these things you will be on Uh, this phone call right now with brian. Okay, that would never happen We've had different varying twists and turns and tribulations to get to this point Um and badges provide one opportunity to in a digital sense recognize those pathways How do they Those are all the virtues and and we've and we've had some we've had some sessions with with folks from credential machine and and others before But i'm i'm curious with with all the criticism around educational technology What uh, what makes What makes badges stand out? I mean that is you know, they are for for people who are suspicious of online learning like that awful New York Times editorial about a week ago um, you know, this is this is a way of concretizing learning and putting it online if you're um, You know, how does you know ed tech has been accused of among other things? Uh being biased towards different populations. How does badging manage to avoid that? Um, and it's also not always accessible in various senses of that term How do how does badging manage to avoid all those problems and still be a good a good tool for good? I mean, that's one of the challenges. So Um when I first started working with badges, I would say 10 12 years ago Um, you know, I'd sit on the mozilla badges calls interact with the community Build and break things frequently online. Um, one of the the and badges were always one of those things that You know, people would have tons of jokes about badges and the value of them. Um, I think To a certain extent that Minds that still exists But as as we you know, and most of us are not normal Most normal people are not signed in and and in this call right now Um, but for for many of us like badges are still this very niche category until You interact in the real world until you see your linkedin badges or your your peloton badges that pop up or your social media badges or I mean, we we see badges in our environments and badges do motivate people um as many uh as I have tons of questions about badges And and I have when I work with groups to bring badges into the environment There's often question marks about how effective and and valuable badges are until Someone Issues a badge and someone else earns the badge then A light goes off and it's really interesting to see how much of a connection In terms of privacy and security, absolutely. Um I was on a a research team that we were looking at um digital badges and blockchain And and trying to think about what potentiality there is. I think that there still is potential We see um, you know, it's working with some institutions looking at transcripts And you know to me a transcript is just like a badge. It's a digital certificate. It's a digital credential The fact that you know, I would have to if I leave my job. I need to call You mass or email you massive pay a fee and get a pdf sent to me is ridiculous You know, I should be able to just Say to the institution. Here is my key go to their website and you can see my credentials. You can see my certificate um So I think there are In my dream You would have badges that would operate in much the same way that uh, you know for to make it a real simple analogy Like a google doc, you know, I can have a badge. I can have a credential a certificate and I can keep it private I can make it read only I can allow others to comment. I can share it but In the same way that it's super easy to share You know, we're removed sharing privileges. I would love to see credentials and certificates that operate the same way that we can Thoughtfully decide where things go We're we're a ways away from that. Um, it's a little bit of the technology. It's a little bit of ownership That's why these technologies are really interesting Um, but there's a lot of things that have to happen to make that reality Well, thank you. That's that's a that's a really really uh, Not just a rich the solid answer with a lot of different directions right now. I appreciate how Uh, how provisional this is too. This is something that's in process right now Friends, I can just pick Ian's brain just non-stop, but the forum is here for you to do that So this is the place for you to perform your questions your comments Already in the text chat. We've had a few people Complaining about blockchain, um, which is Fiercely debated on the forum At least for a year. Yeah, absolutely But we have we have george station who wants to join us on stage So let me just bring him up so we can circle back to the question of facebook Or whatever else george wanted to talk about Let's see How are you doing, sir? Hi, okay. Can you hear me? Okay. Absolutely. Hey, hi, Ian. Hi. How's it going? Good to see you our rare synchronous moments here over Over time here. I'm sorry about dredging up the Are not I'm not sorry about what I put into the chat about google plus um because it kind of ties to your You know delete facebook get off of everything um For everybody else who may not have seen that. Okay. Um, I've got several years worth of google plus archives and Ian you're there so You would have to negotiate with me to make that disappear That is one of the issues, you know, you held up the giant privacy book But I'm thinking of that as one of the issues That anybody who actually saves their chats or or things like that and in that case, it's even more insidious because um google of course still has blog or blog spot and and That means that anytime I feel like it I can put all those archives back up online Because it just it just it's google magic. It just works and that's not necessarily good news for people looking for privacy or looking to get themselves off the internet So I uh, but as to the original question deleting facebook Um, just to answer your your question. Um, I'm not and it's for much the same reason It's for that family connection not so much for And for maybe just a few of my friends And colleagues from way back or whatever because we've reconnected through that medium or other social media But facebook because it's sort of now Some form of commons or ground zero or whatever for everyone and I'm wondering how We stay connected to those we want to stay connected to That's turned into the challenge that I'm not sure existed some years ago because facebook is that's where So many family members are Even if they're not there much It's where you're going to find them through facebook and messenger. And so I'm seeing that as the continuing challenge And the cesspool part of it, you know, do you want to be in this environment where there's clearly misuse and abuse and so on? Um, that's still there And I see people deciding am I going to be on facebook or twitter and whichever one they're leaving is the one that they say is the cesspool Yeah, exactly. Yeah compared to cesspools. Which one is yeah, they're eating, you know in that in that sense It's like I need to get away from all these horrible people that are on the other platform and and I and I hear that from common acquaintances who may not be in the room today, but we I would say common acquaintances in the edtech world and so on Will pick one and they'll say I'm off of the other because of its abuses because of its, you know data collection or whatever it is um So that's I hope addresses your initial question Uh, to me, uh, that's kind of where I am. I'm still there because I'm lured by that Ease of staying connected to people I don't want to be disconnected from Yeah, maybe I do have their phone number. Yeah, maybe I do have their snail mail address but they're on facebook and The it may be learning curve or preference or whatever, but they're not going anywhere else So I'm kind of there for now Including in fact in the forum the higher ed learning collective That you mentioned, you know your forum where um, one more admission. I didn't know you were an admin for that or for the longest I was just in there Scrolling like everybody else and then finally I looked at you know, oh, maybe I should check the rules if I'm kind of post anything You know, and that's how I found out um So thank any anyway. Thanks for letting me, you know bent on on bad. I and I'm hoping that addresses what you want to address Yeah, absolutely I mean one of the things is like so google plus was Wonderful I thought it was wonderful, you know, and you and I would have frequent discussions with others Um, yeah, I was all over that place. I wrote for several of our professional organizations or my professional organizations I wrote guides on how to use google plus In the organization and in classes and then all of a sudden gone and so And and we see that that tension where it's like, okay. I'm on facebook, but facebook is a cesspool So now I'm on twitter, but cessbooks the fifth, you know, twitter is a cesspool Cessbook there you go. It's trending. Um, the other challenge is, you know, and brian brought up mastodon before and so we see You know these communities moving for better or worse and and we see, you know positive and negative connotations of those communities that are that are you know forming different areas There's also challenges with mastodon You know, I've I've been members of different instances that I thought I would be a natural fit for and then had to like Leave and go to a different You know a different instance because There's some issue So I I agree that there's that challenge of moving around and You know, there's a couple larger questions based upon what george has brought up one is Is it truly possible to ever as this big thing says like disappear from the internet? Most of this starts with, you know Is it, you know, finding out what different sources of information are on you on you online? Figure out what registrars have about you legal things going to have it stricken from the record, but then You know, you get further and further into these areas where you're, you know, disconnecting yourself I'm I'm making shell corporations, you know, so that you can't find my house and where I live and and those legal records Um, so it gets really problematic to exist. Um, you know, and do you want that? Do you want to stay connected with other people online? Do you want to be able to stay, you know connected? Do I want my kids to be able to do it? The the broader question is also Um, is it possible to do good in these spaces? Is it possible to use social media to Make the world a better place? That's one of the the the challenges that I've had Um, is it sometimes I feel like I'm doing good things You know, Brian have I we've had discussions about whether facebook is valid. Um, he's indicated, you know He has has built a really nice community around his facebook feed and can have really good thick rich discussions Um, but I think you have to really invest in that Um, you know the higher learning collective. I think that you know, george you were there for with some discussions where we talked about some of the Um Bad harmful behaviors that we had and how do you address that or do you just shut the thing down? Um, so I'm wondering is it possible to Do good or are we completely in this space where? Um In an earlier research call one of my colleagues said that, you know, I'm done with moving to global I'm done with moving to expand and include everyone. I'm moving to very Targeted specific projects and specific communities, you know, either local or micro communities and I'm going to do work with them and you know, if I can Move the needle with three or four like-minded people. That's great But I I can't move the needle with 100 2000 40 000 people in in a facebook group So i'm trying to figure out How do we deal with with with these events? Can I can I flash something on the screen that just came up in the in a question? We've talked about the Is it possible to do good in social media? So that's just one part of it and then we've talked about in terms of trade-offs And then we've also talked about in terms of the less or evil But our friend tom hams offers another way of looking at it, which is just in terms of opportunity costs so if George and I spent a lot of time Curating a space and and making it available for really good discussions. Well, that's time that we burned Not doing something else. So that's another another angle of this I definitely agree. I think the challenge is You know a corollary to that discussion is this idea of you know We believe that because we have these technologies that we could and should do incredible things and there's this This focus on hyper productivity and because I can You know now i'm trying to figure out how do I connect my e-reader to my obsidian account And I have all these nested links and stuff like that because I could do that doesn't mean that I should And that we're we're seeing this this realization of the fact that we only have so much time in our day And our attention is probably our most valuable asset even Perhaps before privacy and our in our data and our attention is valuable You know, am I taking away time from? Playing with my kids, you know or Going out and fishing or am I taking away from other areas? That are better uses of my time And just because I can do these things doesn't mean that I need to I need to have a little bit more balance And we see this this move to Digital minimalism stuff like that Speaking speaking of time We have some more questions coming in I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to to take a whack at them george It's always good to see you and thank you for elevating our conversation in a good google plug way Yeah, thanks, and I've got one more and I'm going to drop it into the ad if you could come back around I'd appreciate it. I think it's about an earlier topic though. Okay. We'll do. Thank you. Thank you We had a question comes in from Natasha who wants you to Zero in on this a little bit more Can you talk a little bit more about how you are conceptualizing doing good? What does it mean to you and we talked about the sustainable development goals? Is that Is that the answer or is there is there more to that? For me, I I think that doing good means different things for different people in my class I try to position this as an opportunity for my students to think about what doing good means in their local context What doing good means for their students? um My hope is for it to be a a responsive Uh, you know a responsive learning environment so that students can indicate to their teacher What doing good means what what pain points they have in their life? Doing good technology for social good to me Is thinking about diverse perspectives thinking about values and beliefs Engagement through collaborative activities coordination of efforts to increase impact You know and so I am cognizant of You know, I am a white cisgender male I am you know increasingly aware of power in society and and what You know opportunities I have had and others have not And so much of my work lately has been trying to de-center myself and pull myself out of Different positions and empower advocate or or hand the mic over to others So I think that there's different opportunities for different people You know, I spent a little bit of time researching Digital activists there's a couple pubs that you can find that I've conducted of looking at Local activists and their digital practices and and what tools and strategies and habits they they utilize to spread their message You know, and it's very interesting how they They're they're they're not they are platform agnostic for the most part They're pull popping up different feeds different places They have multiple dummy accounts for facebook and elsewhere And that they're really trying to leverage these tools The tefechi book talks about this Twitter This as well how they're leveraging these different tools and spaces And trying to be a little bit more digitally agile and a little bit more representative of what the technologies can can create So it could look like doing social good could be campaigning could be Handing the mic over to another group that's marginalized. It could be advocacy could be activism There's a lot of different things that mean a lot, you know for different people I view my role lately Given my my identity given my profession As it's my goal to hand the mic over to others But that is quickly changing As I talk to students and teachers and alumni in my area Where we have a concern about the tone of conversation how it's changed We've had discussions about What is my role as an academic? You know, I have a publication online about being a public academic at hybrid pedagogy From a couple years ago and and i'm thinking increasingly more academics You know, I need to speak up a little bit more Than I have in the past. Oh, that's a trick. That's that's quite a shift from those two directions Um, well, thank you for for that Well, Natasha, first of all, thank you for that really good question And thank you, uh, Ian for just just really unfolding that a little more deeply We we've talked about the badges. We've talked about facebook But we've touched on on master done and chris aldrich wants to ask a question a very precise question But I have to say he has the best affiliation of today's session because he comes to us from bopho soco books And I and I just your wins the day. I can't get enough of that He says having mentioned master done have you looked at the hometown version or flavor for classroom use Is specifically allows local only posting that might allow private classroom conversations And I myself I have not looked at that. I you know, one of the things that um I'm You know part of the One of the recent trends is I've been trying to I'm not really as interested in delete facebook I'm more interested in running my own and and decentralized technologies And having a lot of uh, you know De-googling myself And so I'm running more open source like next cloud different tools and so I've been trying to envision ways to have more Low-tech or no tech option, you know opportunities in our classroom. So a local Relatively closed decentralized master done instance would be really interesting. Um You know the the technology behind master done and the decentralized, you know discussion technologies Is fascinating and and you know, we we see it being used in different spaces You know, we saw it being used Um with a lot of the alt right and far right populations, you know, when they were leaving Facebook and twitter and elsewhere So there's that, you know, this is what I I try to talk about in my weekly newsletter is that, you know With technology there there is a a blessing and a curse. There's great responsibility with these tools that we have Oh Well said, uh chris. Thank you for that great question. Um, I'll definitely check it out again. Hopefully you're doing well chris Well in in the chat. He says it comes from the developer. Uh, Darius Kazimi And uh, there's a little link there to uh, so this philosophy about it. I'll definitely check that out So thank you. Um, and uh, we some friends we have Just 10 minutes left. So this is the time for you to put in your questions If you'd like to ask our guest about a specific technology or about specific practice If you'd like to raise a different idea Or question again the idea of what doing good is This is the place. Um, so and this is the time We have one question that circles back to a previous point About the badges Lee Nichols asks are there efforts to either standardize badges or make them intelligible slash transferable among institutions and companies Or is that not desirable? Um, real quick back to chris's point one of the things that I should indicate is this this idea of indie web philosophies To me, that's the real future. Um, you know, it's I spent a lot of time like building and breaking my spaces and trying to quote-unquote Own my materials and the nice thing would be to have your data your identity your content and be able to Move it in and out. So if you do leave facebook, it doesn't mean you delete yourself Or you hope that george doesn't have everything archived In terms of badges, there is a lot of discussion about interoperability. There's a lot of concern about Do badges live forever or do they die off after a time? Do we want them to live forever? You know, it's when I started playing with badges. I would run it on the mozilla servers and then one day They folded up the mozilla servers badges dot mozilla and You know, I'm in the middle of classes and offering badges and all of a sudden it's gone and I had some An interesting back and forth with the the dev team And mozilla talking about why would they do that especially if they want to make this operate and continue on With badges we are You know, there's this idea of the learning has already occurred or the interaction has already occurred and so We're collecting the digital residue and we're recognizing that With that credential or that that badge that online certificate Um, and so there is this idea of do we want things to stick around forever? So just like my Back and forth woody repartee with george station and lower gives and others is out there from google plus Do I want that to live forever? if I Get a badge from a learning community if I You know if pf has a a badge system and we award new members of the community Do I want that to live out there online? You know as as we see As we see individuals that are targeted for their ideas As we see individuals that are targeted for their research interests their agenda or their identity Do we want an opportunity to really recognize and save? And you know keep forever those badges Does somebody have the opportunity to hold that badge for a little bit and then hand it over to somebody else? for years later Well, and you can you can turn the question around too. Uh and think that you've got we have Badges that are indicative of the issue in authority So if i'm trying to figure out if charleston or whomever is Some place for me to study from or collaborate with that sort of badges actually can tell me something And if we have an institution, you know We're we're in a time period. Well a lot of our institutions are you know, we're questioning the value of our larger institutions We're trying to make sense of Do we want to be part of that? I'm a member of multiple professional organizations And there is some give and take as to their value in our spaces in our communities If a institution or a badging authority falls out of favor Do we still want to be associated with that or do should we have the opportunity to serve like that google doc remove permissions from that The right to be forgotten is a tricky one George in the in jurisdiction the chat circles back to this. He says badges look like an unfortunate way to save time On the magic 120 years to graduation Unfortunate because they might look like an easy way to defund higher ed. Is this a problem? Well, the the interesting thing about badges is that they're they're online certificates. They're they're basically credentials And so the the beauty of it is that anyone can offer those So, you know, if I want to study with brian if I want to study and learn from brian and be An apprentice under brian, um, you know I Would have to be born in a certain part of the world or have the ability to get to that part of the world I'd have to figure out a way to connect create those connections An alternative model is brian could say i'm going to start up an online school And anyone can come to me. You don't have to be affiliated with a specific institution You're going to come to my school. You're going to take classes with me. You're going to study In my community I'm going to rub elbows with other individuals that are in brian school And then brian can give out badges to say, okay Yes, you are a member of my community and you are the second third level, you know Ninja within my school. There's the opportunity to really identify to have badges serve as a digital indicator of that person um So in that, um, that's a good idea because we all know and love brian The alternative would be if all of a sudden you have somebody that you know is is less qualified Okay, so if I were running a school Zero people would want to come to that school and zero people would want to mentor under me So this question is about what those things mean Um, and how things change over time, you know, like my value as an educator my value as is a scholar I guess online, you know, I am at the college of charleston So I have a certain cache or connection if I choose to leverage that if I leave and I go to MIT or I go to harvard or another institution does my value go up or down Okay, or if I'm at MIT or harvard or elsewhere and I and I leave or or a disgrace happens later Does my value go up or down? So those are other components to think about as we think about these credentials and connections and archiving our spaces over time Great question. I'm holding back in there. Isn't what matters your ability to perform the skill not whether you're a badge um This is one of the things back working with a high school audience. We were doing Uh digital portfolios everything old is new again And with the digital portfolios we had students identifying their one page resume And the idea was that, you know, yes, you could have a high school diploma But if I was teaching kids in a bow tech high school When I was, you know students would leave and they'd want to show a video of them fixing a carburetor if carburetor still exists Or or involved in family consumer sciences and making three tier cakes So there's the opportunity to show that skill but also make that a little bit more digitally portable so I can share it out with others Yes Well, it's a it's a good question. He he had an earlier one which actually really resonates right now Um, I don't put this on the on the screen is our last question of the day Returning to media literacy given that some of our students are going to be using or used by social media What can we provide them or how can we provide them a more critical awareness? Excellent question. This is one of the things that keeps me up late at night My dissertation was on critical evaluation of online information I had middle school students Study hoax websites and this was 15 20 years ago. So it was dog island dot com and My research lab was famous for the pacific northwest tri octopus And we would look at california velcro crop and all that stuff So I showed these eighth graders eight to ten hoax websites And I said, okay, are these useful and truthful a.k.a. Are they credible? Are they relevant in academic ease and all the students said yeah, these are 100 real dog island It shows the dogs. They're playing they look happy It shows the temperature and then I said these are all hoax websites These are bogus. So they all all the eighth graders cried. You're a teacher. Why would you lie to me? And so what we did was we Identified what were the elements the components of the websites that trick them And that we had the students create hoax websites And and what we focused on is healthy skepticism So you know when somebody knocks on your door and says hey We're putting new solar panels in the neighborhood or doing new windows You know and it's saturday afternoon. You're sort of like not so sure I feel about you know this I I think what we have to do is focus on those those those mindsets of being a little bit more critical healthy skepticism But we have the fundamental question that has to be asked and this is what I try and focus on each week in my in my newsletter is Are people paying attention to those sources or just the vehicle that it comes from Are people believing information because it comes from facebook or it becomes from my friend in facebook You know, we have a lot of questions that have to be answered and the problem is going to get worse You know the problem is going to get worse. Thanks to deep fake technologies And other stuff that's coming down the pike It's going to get worse before it gets better Well, that's a that's a great answer to john's great question and you also anticipated my next question. So thank you That's a that's a wonderful too for um, I I hate to wrap up on such a A stressful note, but I think that's a really good caution and a good sobering way for us to be thinking about this You know, you know, I I normally ask people How we can find them online and keep up with them, but your your goal is to prevent that from happening Um, I should say that uh, if will you keep up with your newsletter? That's the I'm definitely going to keep up with the newsletter. I blog a little bit too often I Am slowly dipping my way back into the indie web stuff and following chris's guidance You know, so I have my blog and I have my weekly newsletter I'm re-examining the different social networks and what they mean for me But I'll definitely keep up the the newsletter for for the time being looking at other opportunities to reboot my podcast or other spaces, but Um, definitely the newsletter definitely the the blog. I'll keep up the social feeds Um for a little bit longer every time I try to get back out. Uh, you know, I get dragged back in Every time I try to get I get pulled back in that's the challenge Well on behalf of your legion of readers, I'm I'm glad you're pulled back in And uh, I I commend everyone to your newsletter and above all, I thank you so much for being a great guest today No worries. Thanks a lot. Thanks everybody Um, my pleasure and I think everyone's pleasure, but don't go away yet friends We need to point out what's happening over the next few weeks And uh, I also wanted to thank you all uh for such really good questions and leading to a great conversation If you want to keep this conversation going Twitter is one of the sources if you don't find it too much of a cesspool Where we have these conversations going just use the hashtag ftte or tweet at me brian alexander And we talked about this on my blog as well. Just go to brian alexander.org If you'd like to go up into our previous sessions where we've talked about digital literacy We're talked about badging. We're talked about social media. Just go to our archive tiny url.com slash ftf archive Now if you'd like to think about more of these issues going ahead Look at form the future of education at us where you can see us with our sessions and everything from design thinking To public higher education to the climate crisis If you'd like to share some of your great stuff that you've done lately Please send me a note. Uh, so I can share it with everybody else and above all, please take care of yourselves friends Um, keep enjoy the summer if you're in the northern hemisphere Uh, enjoy the winter if you're in the southern hemisphere above all, please take care of yourselves and be safe We're glad to see you and glad to think together with you until next time. We'll see you next time online Bye bye