An effective educator is often an organized educator. In class, Michael discussed several digital tools for organizing oneās files and curating a Brainscape. A Brainscape, or second brain, is a digital āporting-overā of the connections between oneās saved, created and curated content.
In an analog format, a Brainscape might take the form of filing cabinets. Each drawer holds a specific type of document. My desktop is a direct descendant of this system.
Itās folders all the way down.
Instead of Inception-levels of folders, Michael recommended a master document system. Using Onenote, for example, I can link multiple documents on a single page. Clicking on a link, I can access the nested documents without scrolling past seemingly-endless .pdf and .doc files.
Obsidian, although mentioned in a previous lecture, has the nesting feature of Onenote and creates a graphic organizer of your content. A classmate generously shared his Obsidian organizer with me, and explained how his documents are connected. It looked something like a spiderweb to me. Each document, note or link can be ātiedā by a thin black line to another. This way, you can see āhubsā of how thoughts are related to each other.
Instead of the prescribed āfolders all the way down,ā software like Obsidian and Onenote allows more organic interaction with your content.
Over winter break, I hope to engage more with this type of curatorial process. In the meantime, Iām left something like this.
But Michaelās introduction of the Brainscape made me think about another type of digital reflection of who I am.
My Reddit feed. (While I use Instagram, Iāve filled it with sugar gliders, hyraxes and cute cat videos).
In contrast, my Reddit includes a fair amount of news articles. Most of them come from CNN or CBC, and largely lean towards the political left. When I do receive a conservative news article, itās often nestled in a r/LeopardsAteMyFace post.
You are what you eat.
To an extent, my feed influences how I lean politically and what social issues I know. This might explain why Iām more familiar with American politics than Canadian.
Students are not isolated from the same algorithms that shape how I think. They consume the same, if not more media than I do.
Although Iāve already written on The Social Dilemma documentary in a previous post, it warrants revisiting. The 2020 documentary discusses the effects of social media on youth, and how it influences mental health, advertising and political leanings.
The documentary focuses on a dramatization of a young male, whose social media feed directs him further into an Extreme Center political leaning. Although a dramatic portrayal, the film speaks to the power that algorithms can have for its users.
As a Socials teacher, I wondered how to engage students in critical evaluation of their feeds.
Just this morning I ran across this article from the Columbus Dispatch. (https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/crime/2024/11/25/body-cam-video-neo-nazis-claim-to-be-victims-after-marching-in-columbus/76568284007/)
It reports on a recent Neo-Nazi march held in Columbus, Ohio. The march, the newspaper reports, received a violent response from African-American members of the community. It also describes a later encounter between the Neo-Naziās and Ohio Police, and highlights the marcherās confusion over being stopped, citing free speech.
Yet when I checked the same event on Fox News Carolina, there was no mention of a counter-protest. The article is linked here (https://www.foxcarolina.com/2024/11/17/we-will-not-tolerate-hate-ohio-officials-respond-reports-neo-nazi-march/).
This source, while providing official condemnation of the groupās hate speech, physically describes the Neo-Nazi group, and omits the episode of their stoppage by police.
Although this is a recent and highly charged subject, I thought about a way to incorporate critical analysis of feed into a Socials assignment.
Royditt (Royle and Reddit)
The goal of the assignment is for students to be able to draw from multiple credible news sources and appropriate social media commentary on the topic. Students will be able to summarize their content, evaluate their political leaning, and provide an argument as to how an imagined social media feed might influence the stance of the consumer.
This assignment could benefit from a Jigsaw approach, where focus groups of students tackle a specific topic, and circulate their project to another group. Each group would write a report on how they perceive the Royditt (of no connection to Reddit, truly) may influence an imagined consumer.
In the first part of the assignment, students would be assigned or choose a current event, topic (AI, etc) or world figure (Trump comes to mind). They would then collect a number of news sources reflecting a political leaning (Right, Center, Left), a piece of appropriate public commentary (a TikTok, appropriate meme, or YouTube short, for example), as well as a news source from a differing political leaning. They would summarize each piece and create a short verbal or written response on the overall effect of their Royditt feed.
A tool that can be used to assist students may be AllSides. Mentioned by a classmate, this website gauges the political leanings of world figures and events, and provides a running chart of headlines organized by leaning. This resource is easy to access and provides users with a one-stop-shop of news articles across a spectrum.
(https://www.allsides.com/topics/donald-trump?search=donald%20trump)
Part two of this assignment would have students exchange Royditt feeds with another group, and for each of them to consider how their peerās created feed influences a consumer, and how, more broadly, it influences them, and how/ if they will move forward with this new information.
One challenge I see with this assignment is the sensitive nature of polarized content. This could be mitigated by the teacher creating a pool of contentious but otherwise āsafeā topics. For example, choosing to focus on nuclear power applications on Three Mile Island instead of an article on Andrew Tate. This way, students could be steered away from topics that might generate more harmful responses than benefit student exposure. On the other hand, students are not ignorant of serious global issues, and likely have opinions of it.
Students also have a wide range of opinions. If the teacher was to assign students to groups, making sure there is a mix of student opinions per group (as applicable or realistic), it might encourage more thoughtful peer engagement.
Moreover, this project has many moving parts. Students need to be able to understand what a credible source is, be able to categorize and summarize information, draw from multiple sources, and consider multiple perspectives. Students will also need to be able to conduct respectful dialogue with each other when personal feelings regarding the articles are mentioned.
While the content skills needed for this assignment are fairly simple, it asks for āsoft skillsā in youth that even many adults may struggle with (Thanksgiving dinner comes to mind).
Just as curating an organizational Brainscape is important, so too is curating oneās social media Brainscape.