In 1997, the Dickey Amendment was inserted into an appropriations bill. It prohibited the use of funds by the Centers for Disease Control to “advocate or promote gun control.” It was paired with a $2.6 million budget cut to the CDC: the exact amount used by that agency for firearm research the year before. The implication was clear: the CDC needs to stay away from … Continue reading Who Tells Your Story?
I don’t know where I learned about the purpose of government. I don’t think it was in high school. While my American History class did a deep dive into information literacy through the lens of primary sources, the motivations of those creating the sources, and the necessity of identifying and accounting for bias, we didn’t get into the big picture of why there’s a government … Continue reading Self-Evident
My first experience with the firehose was Usenet. In the pre-web Internet days, there was a global discussion board with thousands of topic-specific groups called newsgroups. You could subscribe to the newsgroups you were interested in, and see the messages posted to those groups. Using special software, called a newsreader, you could manage which groups you belonged to, and read, post, and respond to messages … Continue reading What Do I See?
A few years ago, MSN fired all of their reporters and replaced them with artificial intelligence. “Reporters” might be the wrong word. MSN didn’t report their own news. They used other news sources, and curated their own news site based on the content that they gathered from other places. They found that this could be done just as easily by software as it can by … Continue reading Did I Really Write This?
Apparently, today is “National Shoot Up Your School Day.” News outlets are reporting that schools are stepping up security following a rash of viral threats circulating on the TikTok platform. The ones who have spent more than 15 seconds researching their news stories are also including a statement from law enforcement saying they are aware of the issue, but have seen no credible threats. Schools … Continue reading How Do You Know?
“You are permitted to bring one 5×7 inch note card to the exam, with any notes on it that you want.” My eleventh grade American History teacher was explaining the rules for the semester exam. “The exam will consist of two essay questions selected from these five.” He gave us the questions. I went to work. This was going to be easy. I wrote the … Continue reading Cheating
Francis Bacon is said to have coined the phrase “knowledge is power,” though it doesn’t appear in any of his writings. Thomas Hobbes used the phrase in the mid-1600s, and Thomas Jefferson employed it on several occasions 150 years later. But there’s evidence that it may be 1000 years older than that. By the time I first heard it from Schoolhouse Rock, it had been … Continue reading Attendentes Potentia Est
Schools are trying to figure out what fall looks like. Are we going to be back in the classroom like we were last fall? That seems very unlikely. Will we still be completely online like we’ve been for the last two months? That’s possible, but it’s more likely that we’re going to try to get teachers and students back in our buildings this fall. Most … Continue reading Designing Hybrid Learning
Taste of Tech 