911 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2018
    1. my book was able to keep the focus on the writing and the technology

      I recommended this book to many people for this reason -- the focus was on the writing and the learning and development of the writer, not the technology itself. We too often get lost in the new and cool tech, and lose sight of the learning (and the reality that many of the tools now here will be gone, so adapting to technology platforms and environments is key.)

  2. May 2018
    1. Civic education should help young people acquire and learn to use the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will prepare them to be com-petent and responsible citizens throughout their lives. [This includes being able to] act politically by having the skills, knowledge, and commitment needed to accomplish public purposes . . . [and to] have moral and civic virtues such as concern for the rights and welfare of others, social responsibility, tolerance and respect, and belief in their capacity to make a difference. (p. 4)

      In this context, helping students acquire skills is a school's achievement.

    2. Beyond just banishing boredom, connecting school with the world in which students live leads them to value learning and to feel a sense of belonging to the school com-munity, resulting in higher achievement.

      In public education we feel this pressure to say that _ results in higher achievement, as if connecting school to the world in which students live isn't the goal, but a means to a measured end. It seems like connecting school to the world in which students live creates a learning network we can cultivate as opposed to looking at student work as a deliverable that we want to weigh and measure. If we have an asset-focused view of students, connecting school to their lives will serve them and their talents better.

    3. Or draft justification statements to explain how their projects are indeed covering Common Core standards (really—we’ve read some)

      I would argue a well-designed project does a better job of covering the standards.It definitely provides a more #authentic, #real-world environment.

    4. ivic engagement projects

      My wife just wrote about this for our local newspaper (as part of a partnership between our writing project and the local paper to raise teacher voices in public).

    5. your academic skills are being strengthened by the project.

    6. ust one lonely hand went up

    7. Elizabeth rarely gave stu-dents explicit guidance, but she didn’t remain silent either, instead re-peatedly tossing questions and challenges back to them.

      Just noting this important insight ...

    8. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-lUrM-rmIE

      The beauty of annotation is that we can embed videos right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-lUrM-rmIE

    9. students had discovered that a bill was under consideration in the Illinois State House of Representatives to end the automatic transfer from juvenile to adult courts. Now the kids were highly focused: How could they lobby legislators to pass the bill?

      Did teacher alert kids? Or were kids alert enough now to be following the news? Wondering about places where teachers intervene and where students take charge ....

    10. Which led to Elizabeth’s next question: “So how should we deal with the difference? How could we arrive at a consensus?”

      From a teaching perspective, this pivot point -- the question posed after the discussion -- is most important, and knowing when that moment is and what to ask is critical (and takes time and mistakes, perhaps)

    11. Steven Zemelman

      I interviewed Steve about his book at Middleweb

      Read When Student Inquiry Becomes Student Action

    12. If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:

    13. Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and May’s conversation! This is the eighth and final text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.

    14. actionINQUIRY

      Our thanks to partner author and writing project director Steven Zemelman, as well as his publisher Heinemann, for contributing this text from From Inquiry to Action: Civic Engagement with Project-Based Learning in All Content Areas to the 2017-18 Writing Our Civic Futures project.

      Also join Steve and educators Mauricio Pineda, Elizabeth Robbins, and Heather Van Benthuysen and the co-founders of Marginal Syllabus, Remi Kalir and Joe Dillon, for a related discussion of the text and thoughts on annotation. The broadcast will be available at Educator Innovator on May 8.

      We also want to celebrate the fact that Steve has been a regular contributor and participant in the 2017-2018 Writing Our Civic Futures. Thank you Steve!

    1. What prevents their frustration from shaping new institutions is a lack not only of imagination but frequently also of appropriate language and of enlightened self-interest.

      I appreciate the notion that enlightened self-interest on the part of learners and a community could lead to meaningful school reform. It can also lead to the creation of pathways in our current systems.

    2. Everywhere this situation discourages both the motivation and the financing for large-scale planning for nonschooled learning.

      This is a fascinating notion that I had never considered about #connectedlearning. Illich presents funding for school and 3rd spaces as mutually incompatible at least which I don't know if I buy.

    3. The richest parents, some 10 percent, can afford private education for their children and help them to benefit from foundation grants. But in addition they obtain ten times the per capita amount of public funds if this is compared with the per capita expenditure made on the children of the 10 percent who are poorest. The principal reasons for this are that rich children stay longer in school, that a year in a university is disproportionately more expensive than a year in high school, and that most private universities depend-at least indirectly-on tax-derived finances.

      Good school, rich school; Bad school, poor school via the Atlantic

      Connecticut is not the first state to wrestle with the conundrum caused by relying heavily on local property taxes to fund schools; since the 1970s, nearly every state has had litigation over equitable education, according to Michael Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College at Columbia University. Indeed, the CCJEF lawsuit, first filed in 2005, is the state’s second major lawsuit on equity. The first, in 1977, resulted in the state being required to redistribute some funds among districts, though the plaintiffs in the CCJEF case argue the state has abandoned that system, called Educational Cost Sharing.

    4. They all match people in order to explore certain "themes"; and these are dealt with in courses, seminars, and curricula in which presumed "common interests" are prepackaged. Such theme-matching is by definition teacher-centered: it requires an authoritarian presence to define for the participants the starting point for their discussion.

      This reminds me of the kind of matchmaking that happens in #ds106's assignment bank and the #clmooc make bank.

  3. Apr 2018
    1. These valuable experiences provided students withcritical skills and strategies to participate in civic and political dialogue paving the way for meaningful and productiveparticipation in the digital age.

      I'd be curious to know how the Youth Voices kids do as they go to college and beyond public school. Have they used those skills for activism, for further connections, for jobs? Another research project for another time ...

    2. youth may either minimize or withdraw their participation from online dialogue because of fears ofnegativity and conflict.

      Can we add privacy violations and data scraping to the list of why young people might be wary?

    3. posting reflections was more fitting than posting a final five-paragraph essay.

      And more authentic, too, I suspect.

    4. Youth Voices is a school-based social network platform that was developed by NWP teachers to bring studentstogether online to share writing and engage in conversation
    5. noted a lack of or “outdated” curriculum

      This is fascinating to me because it speaks to the need for implementation research around projects like the YouthVoices.live work referenced in this article.

    6. a healthy democracy and is a key aspect of civic and political life

      Important to note the date of this article for a few reasons: 1 How have things changed since the 2016 presidential election?

      2 Does this article express a sense of urgency? Should it?

    7. Youth Voices
    8. Whereas low-income youth are more likely to learn or practice basic skillscausing what Schradie called “the digital production gap.

      And testing. Lots and lots of testing. All year. That's too often how computer labs are utilized in many struggling districts -- to gather achievement data instead of teaching skills for communication. This was true years ago and still rings true today in too many schools.

    9. 2005

      13 years ago. Not sure this holds up.

    10. a significant number of respondentsrecommended withdrawing from the conversation rather than working toward productive dialogue.

      This is not a surprising finding, and yet, it's disheartening. I wonder if this is still true, two years later -- after the election that has divided the US. And do we want more withdrawal (giving us time to think and ponder our reaction to something) or less (engaging, but maybe engaging with diatribe)? This is all the heart of discussions about how we engage in discussions. I'm not sure of the answer ...

    11. echo chambers

    12. filter bubbles

    13. online dialogue can take place anytime, anywhere

      Including the margins ...

    14. Internet-fueled communication

      I'm looking at the date of this article --June 2016 -- and thinking, this term here seems almost quaint now, doesn't it? All of this has now been ramped to the extreme -- the flow of communication, good and ill -- has taken over our ability to curate and make sense of things.

    15. Dialogue

    16. Educating Youth for Online Civic and PoliticalDialogue: A Conceptual Framework for the Digital Age

      Our thanks to partner author Erica Hodgin for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! Erica and guest reader Paul Oh joined Marginal Syllabus co-founders Joe Dillon and Remi Kalir for a CLTV webinar discussion about this text - it will air "live" on Tuesday, April 3rd at 4p PT.

    17. If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:

    18. Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and April's conversation! This is the seventh text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open technology for web annotation.

    1. Even if they, as individuals, have developed the digital literacy to use their blogs to express their activism/citizenship, the sociopolitical environment makes it difficult for them to actually apply this expertise without substantial personal ris

      These sociopolitical environments are ever shifting, also. It seems as though students need to know how to engage publicly as well as how to evaluate the risks of doing so. What are ways we can ask learners to practice with these kinds of decisions?

    1. Originally seen on Twitter in response to the unceasing murder of unarmed young men and women of color at the hands of police officers, #BlackLivesMatter is an ongoing movement to end violence—both literal and symbolic—that people of color continue to experience. As such, we are intentional in noting that #BlackLivesMatter is not simply a “trending” phrase or a “dialogue.” As a movement, #BlackLivesMatter has persevered in public consciousness over the past 3 years largely due to its ability to sustain participation in both online spaces and in physical demonstrations like “die ins” (Levenson, 2014) held during holiday shopping seasons.

      The #BlackLivesMatter movement leverages social media in such a way that its digital footprint can be read. Would-be activists can make meaning of and draw inspiration from the public networked writing of the movement leaders and of those whose voices emerge as powerful in any given moment.

    1. If par-ticipants are guided by directional motivation, then we hypothesize(Hypothesis 1) that those participants assigned to an ideologically alignedpost will be more likely to judge the post as accurate

      Here's the hypothesis re: directional motivation.

  4. Mar 2018
    1. Finally, it is important for educators to implement these same tools with White students who benefit from white supremacy and the damaging narratives that mainstream media produce about Black youth and other youth of color.

      YES! It's time for white folks to dismantle white supremacy.

    2. In the July 2016 English Education themed issue, “Why Black Girls’ Litera-cies Matter: New Literacies for a New Era,” Sealey-Ruiz argues, “instruction must be urgent and purposeful in responding to and anticipating the social context of our times” (p. 295). In the wake of racial violence, we argue that it is important for educators to engage in revolutionary praxis by reimagining their classroomsas spaces for triage, self-care, healing, and social transfor-mation.

      I love the image of classrooms as spaces for "triage, self-care, healing, and social transformation." This also means that those of us who are white teachers need to also do our work to make sure we aren't enacting our own white privelege (and thus anti-blackness) in our own practices.

    3. As illustrated during the Ferguson6 and Baltimore7

      I keep reading this and thinking about how differently the Parkland activists have been received as opposed to BLM activitists. It has also been heartening to see the way they have combined movements in response to critical readings (rooted in the lens presented here) of their movments: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/parkland-race-and-the-gun-violence-that-goes-overlooked

    4. “he suffered from mental illness”

      This is something that folks have critiqed in the #WalkUpNotOut hashtag and ideas: both in keeping with the strategy of protraying white criminals as mentally ill and also the idea that victims themselves are responsible for the violence they experience. https://www.salon.com/2018/03/25/the-sexist-racist-implications-of-the-walk-up-not-out-movement_partner/

    5. who was assaulted in her math class

      I'm just noticing now this mention that it was a math class where this happened. I'm not sure what to make if it really, and I don't want to over-make ... but/and I can't help but wonder about the connection.

      My thinking about math education and the relationship to oppression/liberation is prompted by looking recently at the resources of the Youth People's Project (such as the Flagway Game) started by Bob Moses vis a vis the Algebra Project.

      http://www.typp.org/

      Mission YPP uses Math Literacy Work to develop the abilities of elementary through high school students to succeed in school and in life, and in doing so involves them in efforts to eliminate institutional obstacles to their success.

      Vision YPP envisions a day when every young person — regardless of ethnicity, gender, or class — has access to a high quality education and the skills, attributes, and community support s/he needs to successfully meet the challenges of their generation.

    6. ti-blackness.

      and anti-everything-but-white-ness

    7. Practical Classroom Application

      Could this/does this open doors for a new hybrid research paradigm (or if it exists, please share)? I see practical parallels elements you might find in a Design Science) or similar approach.

    8. Valerie Kinloch

      (pictured here) I pulled this photo from her profile at Ohio State here.

    9. Mahiri (2004)

      (Pictured here) I pulled his photo from his profile at Cal Berkeley here.

    10. Malcolm X

    11. e Robertson Treatment, 201

    12. According to Robinson, executive director of ColorofChange.org, “Repeated exposure to unbalanced and distorted portrayals of Black people in media leads to the development of implicit biases against them” (“Not to Be Trust-ed,” 2015, p. 3). For example, patterns in portrayals of Black people in the media can (1) promote antagonism toward the Black community, (2) promote exaggerated views of Black people related to criminality and violence, and (3) reduce attention to structural and other big-picture factors that affect the Black community, such as racial inequalities (“Media Representations and Impact,” 2012).

      We've had a number of readers respond to this text but no notes yet about these three tangible ways traditional media narratives about Black people cause harm. To annotate this with an anti-racist focus, educators could surface examples of how they see the impacts of these with students in varied contexts.

    13. Pedagogies of healing and critical media literacy are important, especially in the wake of racial violence when mainstream media work to stigmatize, characterize, and marginalize Black youth by projecting them as dangerous Others

      The first line reminds me of the authors' description of the background of this piece. https://youtu.be/N5NVySOiu1U

    14. In other words, the same racist brutality toward Black citizens that we see happening on the streets across the United States mirrors the violence toward Black students that is happening in our nation’s academic streets.

      The shooting of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, OK. always stands out to me as a particularly evil example, in part because of the media that arose from it. There is audio taken from a police helicopter before Crutcher was shot in which a man with a southern drawl describes Crutcher as a "bad dude." At that point in the video all the police officer who was mic'ed up could see was that Crutcher was tall and black. Watching from my own chair in Denver, I was moved to blog the following:

      And the cover up is such a familiar narrative that we can hear this helicopter pilot starting the cover up story even before Terence Crutcher was shot. From his arial vantage point, a white man with a badge describes Crutcher, who had his hands in the air, as a "bad dude" who is probably "on something." The officer who shot Crutcher is being described by some in the Tulsa police and by her attorney as a "drug recognition expert." Instead of calling this murder the way we can all see it, this murder is being quickly reframed as the shooting of a "bad dude" by a "drug recognition expert."

      Even as I angrily blogged, I didn't make the important connection that these authors do, the connection to the way Black students will feel in the weeks after a shooting as their community seeks justice and school marches on. These authors ask "What's next for the students?" This morning I found an article about Black student responses in a Tulsa school to the same shooting. I find them haunting:

      “Why did they have to kill him? Why were they afraid of him? Why does (Crutcher’s daughter) have to live life without a father? What will she do at father-daughter dances? Who will walk her down the aisle? Why did no one help him after he was shot? Hasn’t this happened before? Can we write her cards? Can we protest?” Lee wrote. “One girl closes our group by sharing: ‘I wish white people could give us a chance. We can all come together and get along. We can all be united.’ 

      It is important to note that the healing referenced in the title isn't just for Black people. Our culture needs healing when these murders happen and our media channels tell a story that indicts everyone in the passive audience.

    15. “debasement of Black humanity, utter indifference to Black suffering, and the denial of Black people’s right to exist”

      This is a powerful expression of the way white supremacy relies on the degradation of Black people. The examples that follow in the piece are plucked directly from huge media channels that reach a broad audience. I'm so thankful for the authors for sharing this type of work in a less than "mainstream" channel of another sort- the Journal of English Education.

    16. A pedagogy of healing

      I highlighted this callout text three time before I tried to comment here. pause I don't want to be a pedagogue. I am not a healer. I don't even know how to heal others. Most healers will tell you that mostly they just facilitate self-healing. Is this a possible healing? pause I haven't read all of this yet, but I am not sure I want the responsibility of 'transformative tools' that get applied to others. Maybe we can open up a space for all students to choose tools of transformation that are apt for them.

    17. https://twitter.com/marclamonthill/status/658766053204324352

      Here's a link tot the tweet referenced in case folks want to retweet it or follow Mark Lamont Hill. https://twitter.com/marclamonthill/status/658766053204324352

    18. Adichie, C. N. (2009, October 7). TED Talks. The danger in a single story. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

      This is one of the first texts my students and I read in English class. I see its placement here as powerful in this list of references. I know the authors developed this list intentionally to send a message about what texts count in Critical Media Literacy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

    19. A game to play as you begin this annotation or one to end with after you have done with it: an empathy map.

      Here is another set of directions.

    20. we call on English educa-tors, regardless of racial and ethnic backgrounds, to examine, critique, and interrupt the grave injustices that are routinely committed against Black youth.

      Their call to action ...

    21. (1) tools to heal: acknowledging that the wound exists and identifying its culprit, and (2) tools to transform: responding to the wound using a tool that works to transform the conditions that led to the wound

      Heal and Transform. Important and powerful.

    22. Black Twitter is a counterspace created by Black Twitter users within the Twitter social network that represents Black perspectives and provides a platform where Black users can control their images, produce counternarratives, express their opinions, voice their concerns, and locate more reliable news and information about the Black community.
    23. These distorted patterns of portrayals not only influence the public’s understandings and attitudes toward Black youth, but also on how these youth view themselves and their communities.

      I'm thinking of how Mueller's team accuses Russian operatives of using social media to stoke divisions in our country right along these lines -- the race divisions were already there but the operatives knew how magnifying these divisions on Facebook and Twitter through groups and fake protests and false news stories would further divide us. This does not let us off the hook. It does show the power of social media on many people's lives, however.

    24. As Black women, moth-ers of Black children,2 educators, critical scholars, and spiritual beings,3 we are devastated by the ubiquitous assault against Black people, and we know that Black children are suffering too.

      Notice the authors here naming who they are in relation to this work.

    25. It was rare to find media outlets that used photos of Brown with his family members or wearing a cap and gown from his high school graduation.

      Totally agree. The gangster narrative was an easy fit for the news media, and became a shallow tale of the victim, not the bigger story of the boy.

    26. Many of the headlines in the media described the killers as “quiet,” “smart,” “nice,” and “typical American Boy[s].” By contrast, Black people—suspects or not—are often not given these same considerations.

      Thinking of Parkland. Not sure if these general descriptions here hold true for that high school killer, who has regularly been described in media accounts as troubled, deranged, psychotic, sick, etc. Is the narrative changing?

    27. mainstream media

      Interesting that Trump and others on the Far Right are also attacking the Mainstream Media. Here, we have the attack from the Left. I'm not here to defend Media itself, as it can be biased and it can make mistakes, but as a former journalist, I wonder about the attacks on the center from the sides. And CNN fired Harry Houck for some of the very reasons this article addresses. https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/02/23/harry-houck-who-used-cnn-position-push-racist-tropes-and-defend-police-brutality-out-network/219491 I guess my concern is that the broad brush of Mainstream Media is not all that helpful to me in my understanding. Reading on ...

    28. The Fire This Time
    29. April Baker-Bell, Raven Jones Stanbrough, and Sakeena Everett

      Our thanks to partner authors Drs. April Baker-Bell, Raven Jones Stanbrough, and Sakeena Everett for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus. A conversation with our partner authors will air "live" on Tuesday, March 6th at 4 pm PT/7p ET - watch it here, it's a really amazing conversation.

    30. If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:

    31. Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and the March conversation! This is the sixth text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal - or contrary - to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.

    1. Most refugees have escaped extreme conflict and persecution abroad, but they may have little understanding of inequality in the United States. Schools should emphasize learning about America’s history of racism and oppression, because students may face the consequences of that history in their daily lives. Teachers can also give young people more active opportunities to engage with inequality, so that students are prepared to challenge discrimination as adults.

      This is a thread that runs through Pedagogy of the Oppressed and much of the Youth Action Research work that fascinates me.

    2. More broadly, Moussa’s school did not prepare him for the marginalization he would experience as a black, poor, non-Christian, non-native-born person in the United States. Moussa felt vulnerable.

      How can teachers help develop agency in students like Moussa while also showing them that there are paths to a non-traditional but manageable post-secondary education? This question can inform text selection in humanities classes and broader pedagogy design.

    3. Teachers have to be wary of the “false hope” that being successful in school will translate equally into livelihood opportunities for all students, according to a new paper by international education policy expert Sarah Dryden-Peterson and doctoral student Celia Reddick.

      This was a frustration of mine watching the new PBS documentary American Creed. There is a scene (19:00-23:00) in which a principal in a Tulsa elementary school talks about how her Native American students can grow up to be whatever they want at the same time she explains how many of the schools' families are trapped in a cycle of poverty, drug abuse, and incarceration. How long will that message ring true for these students given their surroundings? The principal, a Native American woman herself, is "living her American dream," in large part because her family owned land and struck oil.

  5. Feb 2018
    1. Accuracy Motivation and Judgments of Truth Claims

      Here's a question that stems from my own work with students and research: How might playful approaches to the teaching of argument foster this type of motivation? Or, how might a Credible Hulk badge and playlist to support the development of this type of motivation?

    2. Instead, the deliberate distribu-tion of misinformation by some politicians, political organizations, and inter-est groups is common (Hochschild & Einstein, 2015; Lewandowsky, Ecker,Seifert, Schwarz, & Cook, 2012)

      This issue has become branded by the most recent presidential election but I think it is important to see that "fake news" is not a recent, or Russian invention.

    3. When assessing exposure to media literacy, we asked youth if educators haddiscussed how important it was to evaluate evidence that backs up opinions(emphasizing the norm of accuracy motivation) and if they had providedskills (or capacities) that would help them judge the accuracy of informationthey find online (emphasizing the need for skills). It would be wise to testadditional ways to promote the norm of accuracy motivation as well asthe skills or capacities to act productively in response to this motivation.

      Evaluation of evidence is something we can practice with and model for students as we work through reading and writing processes.

    4. The emphasis educators place on knowledge and analyticreasoning in non–politically charged contexts is not misplaced, but this focusis insufficient if we are to fully prepare youth for democratic participation inan increasingly partisan age.

      Perhaps we already knew this ... but the study here confirms that need for expansion of critical media studies in all classrooms ...

    5. On their own, the dynamics associated with knowledge are not neces-sarily problematic. Knowledge may enable youth to better align their beliefswith their judgments. However, from the standpoint of preparing studentsfor political deliberation, political knowledge is insufficient

      Balance ...

    6. In particular, in a polarized environment, judgments of truth claims areoften shaped more by whether or not individuals’ prior perspectives on theissue align with the claims than by how well informed the individuals are ortheir capacities to reason (Lavine, Johnston, & Steenbergen, 2012; Taber &Lodge, 2006).

      Fascinating the way bias ties into the reading process.

    7. To cite one stark example, in 1960, roughly 5%of Republicans and Democrats said they would be ‘‘displeased’’ if their childmarried someone from the other party.

      What are the implications of this on trust in our schools?

    8. Statistical Methods

      Can't help but be immediately skeptical of statistical analyses tied to emotionally-fueled research.

    9. many are advocating increasing provision of civic media literacyeducation (Hobbs, 2010). Our focus in this study is on media literacy learn-ing opportunities that aim to promote accurate judgment of truth claims.

      I often look to the open course, Calling Bullshit (Univ. of Washington) as a starting point.

    10. Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age:Confronting the Challenges of MotivatedReasoning and Misinformation

      Find a supporting conversation on Educator Innovator's Connected Learning TV, where Joseph Kahne talks in depth about some of these findings and implications for educators: https://educatorinnovator.org/webinars/educating-for-democracy-in-a-partisan-age/

    11. direc-tional motivation (the desire to justify conclusions that align with priorbeliefs

      Directional motivation is a key concept. I think we all have a little bit of it in us (similar to "confirmation bias), especially when thinking about politics. Making students aware of this is an important step – as is being aware of it in my own thinking.

    12. when motivated by accuracy goals, ‘‘[Individuals] expendmore cognitive effort on issue-related reasoning, attend to relevant informa-tion more carefully, and process it more deeply, often using more complexrules’

      Getting students to take on an accuracy motivation stance is the goal. Those kinds of thinking routines have to take place often and over time if they're going to stick though

    13. These experiences tap into two primary ways by which anaccuracy motivation might be instilled through media literacy education: bycultivating skills for judging accuracy and developing commitment to a normof accuracy

      I like that the focus here is not just on skills but on the development of a commitment to -- which is related to expectations and practice.

    14. However, in the presence of misinformation,directional motivated reasoning has unambiguously negative implicationsfor democratic deliberation

      Thinking about the implications of this ... going back to read danah boyd: https://points.datasociety.net/hacking-the-attention-economy-9fa1daca7a37

    15. In sum, these changes in the media environment appearlikely to increase individuals’ abilities to act in response to directional moti-vation and by fostering more extreme partisan leanings, increase the degreeto which individuals’ judgments are driven by directional motivation

      Again, not inevitable. Designed.

    16. the dominance of direc-tional motivation is not inevitable

      Seems important to highlight!

    17. When individuals accept misinformation usedto support policy arguments or even worse, when they choose to trumpetthat misinformation to justify their position on an issue, they may welllead others who are not aware that the information is inaccurate to adopta position they would not otherwise hold.

      This might as well be at the heart of the Russian Interference Doctrine for the United States Election ... pay for information push on Facebook, and understand that users will freely distribute misinformation to their friends and family, who will then push the misinformation further and further ...

    18. the misinformed are confident that they are correct, resist factually correctinformation, and use their misinformation to form their policy preferences

      Yep. We want to believe what we already know.

    19. 2011

      Of course, that seems a lifetime ago. Seven years in the social media might as well be a few generations.

    20. outh Participatory Politics
    21. aniel Patrick Moynihan
    22. widespread use and circulation of misinforma-tion

      So, thank you Facebook and Twitter and YouTube for doing your part ...

      See: 'Fiction is Outperforming Reality': How YouTube's Algorithm Distorts Truth via The Guardian on the role of algorithms ...

    23. We found that political knowledge did not improve judg-ments of accuracy but that media literacy education did.

      This is the message we all need to keep shouting, loud and clear and with consistency. And we need to it together, teachers and librarians (media specialists) and technology integrationists and parents.

    24. Joseph KahneUniversity of California, RiversideBenjamin BowyerSanta Clara University

      Our thanks to partner authors Joe Kahne and Ben Bowyer for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! Joe also joined a number of educators for a Connected Learning TV webinar that will air on February 6th at 4p PT. You can watch it here.

    25. If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:

    26. Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and February’s conversation! This is the fifth text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.

    1. To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you. Crowd chants, shame on you.

      Amazing that the NRA still has such influence despite their tone deaf responses to school shootings. It isn't surprising to me that the gun debate still persists, but the staying power of the NRA as an organization is shocking.

    1. Two guys had opinions but a woman said their opinions were bad and they should not be allowed to have opinions because they were not certified opinion-havers like her. The end.

      Here are some facts that the Washington Post might have included: Two black men who are social icons and community leaders commented on a presidency marked by lies, and the stupidity of a president who mistakenly believed Frederick Douglass is still alive. The response of a conservative journalist was to question their intelligence and belittle their work by painting the entrepreneurs as dumb physical laborers.

  6. Jan 2018
    1. homes being disrupted—by divorce, evictions, mental illness, alcohol, or drug addiction.

      As a teacher, I never really know exactly what is happening on at home for my students. Some do a great job at hiding their struggles while others do not. We all have our own struggles to go through in life. Students should feel good when they are in school. They need to see teachers genuinely care and want to help them succeed.

    2. I became curious about what I didn’t know

      Learning from my students is one of the things that I look forward to the most when teaching. They inspire me constantly to learn more and look at things from a different perspective. They remind me to question what I read and what I am told.

    3. Their test scores guided our work.

      So much of teaching is focused on test scores today. As a math teacher, I find that not only students but teachers are more worried about test results than what learning is actually taking place. Taking a test is not an easy task for all students. There needs to be a better way to indicate learning than simply taking tests all of the time.

    1. The children worked this out for themselves with the actual material, aided by questions and suggestions from the teacher.

      I find this to be related to what I have been learning through STEM lessons. Much of the push requires students to learn through their own experimenting and hands on activities. It is much more student centered than teacher centered. Students are able to find solutions and defend their work rather than simply follow steps to produce results.

    2. motive, of spirit and atmosphere.

      Students like many adults today need to find a reason to do something. Learning does not happen fully if a person does not see the value in what they are learning. There has to be a motive.

    3. between teacher and pupil, or between teacher and parent

      I find this more of a triangle in today's education system. It is not only teacher and pupil or teacher and child, but rather all three in constant communication and contact. It truly is a team effort when it comes to learning.

    1. The purpose of democracy is to empower individual citizens and give them sufficient control over their lives to protect themselves from domi-nation.

      You can write about this line.

      (One possible response frame: The purpose of democracy is to __.)

    2. As I worked my way through the text with those students, I realized for the first time in my own life that the Declaration makes a coherent philosophical argument.

      You can write about this line.

      (One possible response frame: As I worked through _ with my students, I realized for the first time in my own life _.)

    3. Yet if you had peeked in on us, what would you have seen? By and large all we were doing was reading texts closely, and discussing them.

      You can write about these lines.

      (One possible response frame: If you had peeked in on us, what would you have seen? By and large all we were doing was __.)

    4. reading the document

      Do your own social reading of the Declaration here.

      Note: this text does include a period after “pursuit of happiness,” a point Allen examines in depth and argues changes the meaning of the document in a profound way (for a brief explanation, see Allen’s Washington Post op-ed on this subject). You might want to keep this point in mind as you read, sharing your own opinions on what the punctuation lends to Declaration’s overall translation.

    5. re-gifted

      Crazy, contemporary word choice.

    6. If the pattern of books published on the Declarationis any indication, we have developed the habit of thinking about the Declarationmainly as an event, an episode in the dramatic unfolding of the American Revolution. But it makes a cogent philosophical case for political equal-ity, a case that democratic citizens desperately need to understand.

      This is a call to action for cult of pedagogy folks like me. As a teacher of English, I'm inspired by the notion that this foundational text needs new reading because the readings to date have a shortcoming, and because our citizens have a real-life need to understand.

    7. are among the most fundamental mysteries of human life

      Not a "best practice," not something scalable for the purposes of spreadsheet data, the learner's growth is a mystery that only the learner can help us solve. If we try to quantify the learning we talk about learning in the language of accountants and auditors. When we avoid the temptation to oversimplify assessment and instead get curious about what changes readers and writers, the job of teaching gives rise to infinite inquiry possibilities.

    8. Or are they merely symbols? My night students’ lives overran with death—from gunshots and overdoses and chronic disease and battery. They were indeed haunted. My day stu-dents, many of them well-heeled and all of them well-insured, were still mostly too young to understand what it means to carry the past around within you.

      The risk factors her night students endure are assets that help them make meaning of the text better than her more privileged day students. Asset focused teaching.

    9. We scrutinized single words. When Antigone, in Sophocles’s play from fifth-century Athens, decides to stand up to King Creon and bury her brother, the chorus describes her as making laws for herself. She is autonomous, they say, which is simply Greek for “making your own laws.”

      This definition of autonomy is an important one for education leaders to think about for so many reasons. It reminds me of last month's reading authored by Linda Christensen, where we read about how teachers actually have more space than we occupy. Some teachers see autonomy where others feel confined.

    10. declares independence.

      How often has domination (or downright genocide) accompanied a "declaration of independence?" Very much depends on the subtext, so the skepticism, unfortunately, seems historically justified. If only we could mean well AND do right.

    11. They showed me things that I had never seen in texts that I thought I knew so well

      To be vulnerable within this power-dynamic is perhaps the ultimate display of truly teaching. The skill is to to so while gaining, not losing, respect and admiration (I'm not there).

    12. They restored to me my patrimony as well as their own, and ours.

      I'd love to know more about her insight here ... I suspect she refers to her "inheritance" of ideals from the Founding Fathers.

    13. equality

      Well, the ideas of equality but perhaps not the reality of equality, right? Words are all good, but it is only when those in power use those words to create equity and access and openness that it means anything. See above: power corrupts.

    14. I could use it to teach history, writing, or political philosophy.

      This is the beauty of the perfect text -- it crosses all sorts of boundaries and opens the floor for all sorts of discussion ...

    15. Declaration of Independence

      Yeah .. this is irreverent ... a diversion ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcoVWSpJFG4

    16. To this day, I have no idea what flipped the switch.

      She won't say it, but I'll say it: Maybe it was your teaching, your compassion, your guidance, your listening, your small points of inflection and reflection. Maybe, likely, it was you, Danielle.

    17. It Never Entered My Mind

      This deserves a soundtrack ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u37lgz7b3lQ

    18. power corrupts
    19. inherit heaven’s graces

      SparkNOTES: examination of the quote from the piece ...

      People such as this, the speaker says, inherit “heaven’s graces” and protect the riches of nature from expenditure. They are “the lords and owners of their faces,” completely in control of themselves, and others can only hope to steward a part of their “excellence.”

    20. My day students wanted to know what it meant for Antigone, as a woman, to stand up for herself in the male-dominated world of ancient Greece. My night students wanted to know whether Antigone’s cour-age was something they could learn from to stand up for themselves, for instance, with their bosses.

      This back and forth -- a duet of stories -- is already an intriguing frame to look at how our classrooms can be in sync with others, and not. I'm noticing the importance of life experience, perhaps, more than age of students. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps it is both, and neither.

    21. In both circles, we were making worlds: naming life’s constitutive events, clarifying our principles, and testing against one another’s wits our accounts of what was happening around us.

      We learn

      by naming worlds

      by navigating the interior

      and dancing along the longitude lines

      of faint sparks of

      what we don't quite yet know

      but sense.

      (a little line lifting poetry for the annotation)

    22. pulsed with energy

    23. Ideally, if political equality exists, citizens become co-creators of their shared world. Freedom from domination and the opportunity for co-creation maximize the space available for individual and collective flourishing.

      My first read through of this paragraph I switched citizens for students. And I loved that read through too

    24. If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:

    25. Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and January’s conversation! This is the fourth text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.

    26. Night Teaching

      Chapter 1 from Our Declaration: A reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality by Danielle Allen. Published by WW Norton & Company, 2014. Used with permission.

      We are thrilled to feature this first chapter of Our Declaration in this month's Writing Our Civic Futures annotation. Here we dive into Allen's teaching as well as the very nature of equality as laid forth by the founding fathers and illuminated by her students.

      We also invite you to, like Allen and her students, to engage in a "slow reading," via social annotation, of the Declaration of Independence.

    1. Declaration of Independence

      In January 2018, The National Writing Project, Educator Innovator and Marginal Syllabus invite you to annotate the Declaration of Independence, along with Danielle Allen’s chapter, "Night Teaching," from Our Declaration (re-published with permission). In her book, Allen reflects on the purposes of democracy after a close reading of The Declaration with her night class students, who bring their own experiences to the text. If you don't catch the annotation this month, her chapter will remain on the Educator Innovator blog, so you can join the convo at any time.

    2. .

      Hear Danielle Allen discuss the problem with this version of the Declaration here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUTyxNb3bEM

    3. .

      According to Danielle Allen, this period is NOT original. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-declaration-of-independence-punctuated-with-confusion/2015/06/12/8a05bd14-106b-11e5-a0dc-2b6f404ff5cf_story.html?utm_term=.4d2c4567fe0c

      Here is the original:

      "The manuscripts written out by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson; the version voted on by Congress, as attested to in the official minutes recorded by Charles Thomson; and the official poster printed up by John Dunlap at Congress’s request, on July 4 and 5, 1776, record a very long second sentence, reading as follows:

      “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

  7. Dec 2017
    1. n To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus explains to Scout that “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (36). Make this advice more literal by inviting students to imagine spending a day in someone else’s shoes in this writing activity. Students examine a variety of shoes and envision what the owner would look like, such as their appearance, actions, etc. They then write a narrative, telling the story of a day in the shoe owner’s life. While this lesson plan uses the quotation from To Kill a Mockingbird as a springboard and ties nicely to discussions of the novel, it can be completed even if students are not currently reading the book

      I also keyed in on this little teaching suggestion here: to invite students to imagine themselves in another's shoes when this particular text is so problematic. How are teachers scaffolding discussions of the ways this text reinforces some pretty stereotypical and racist narratives? How do we find space to make room for counternarratives when the cannon stands so firmly uncontested in our classroom spaces? Just something I'm thinking about these days...

    2. I taught “disadvantaged” students.

      This reminds me of the first reading we did about youth activists: our students become activists when they are empowered to tell their own story, rather that the story of their "disadvantage." There is danger, as we know, in a single story. The danger of a single story: TED TALK

    3. unleash their beauty on the page

      This is an incredible way to describe the opposite of a deficit stance towards students. Beauty unleashed is what I want for all our students.

    4. I try to make my literacy work a sustained argument against inequality and injustice.

      Thanks to dogtrax (Kevin Hodgson) for both his blog post inviting educators-as-annotators to create "a multimedia collage of thoughts and connections," as well as his annotations in these margins that blend hand-written with digital marginalia (here's one example), I'll share another from my reading:

      I'm inspired by Linda's emphasis on teaching as a sustained argument against inequality. In doing such work (for it is work, and more on that later), what - and who - offers sustenance so as to sustain such argumentation? How is such work sustained, particularly over time? And what is the role of networks in sustaining arguments against inequality? I also appreciate Linda's use of the word "work," for teaching is a labor - in this case, literacy education is a means of laboring for equality and justice.

    5. sancocho
    6. museums
    7. city
    8. Becoming the kind of teacher I wanted to become meant banging my head against the wall

    9. Over the years students taught me that teaching language arts doesn’t mean diving into data to locate the discrete reading or writing skills a student needs to learn, and it doesn’t mean looking at the sea of students and neatly matching novels to their race or heritage, nor does it mean creating a mathematical formula to represent the diversity in the room.

    10. happening in the world and the way it affects my students’ lives—sometimes in obvious ways like the impact of gentrification on our community,

      The relevance of this kind of curricular planning appeals to me. I was reminded of how important Linda's work is when I saw a news story in my own community about a company's insensitivity about the issue of gentrification and how it led to civic action on social media, as well as some genuine civic unrest in Denver. The New York Times saw fit to report it.

    11. These days I attempt to teach a critical literacy that equips students to “read” power relationships at the same time it imparts academic skills.

      It always stands out to me when teachers frame reading in ways that apply to understanding the world. This kind of framing makes everyone a reader, and highlights how reading strategies are thinking strategies.

    12. If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:

    13. Linda Christensen

      Our thanks to partner author Linda Christensen for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! Linda will be featured alongside Andrea Zellner (Literacy Consultant for Oakland Schools and Teacher Consultant, Red Cedar Writing Project), Kevin Hodgson (6th grade teacher in Southampton, Massachusetts and Outreach Co-director at Western Massachusetts Writing Project), and Marginal Syllabus organizers Joe Dillon and Remi Kalir in a Connected Learning TV webinar scheduled to air on Tuesday, December 5th. This annotation will be updated to include that webinar video.

    14. Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and December's conversation! This is the third text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.

    15. At the end of the read-around, I tell students to write the “collective text” from the class.

      I mentioned at the end of the video with Linda that this metaphor of the collective story now extends beyond her text, as we are writing (with her ) in the margins. We are creating our own collective text with her students' text as the inspiration. This one of the many powerful aspects of digital annotations. We each add another branch to the story tree.

    16. But as teachers, we have more academic space than we inhabit. We can choose to push back against the disadvantaged narratives and mandates that continue to lurk in our schools and society and instead build a curriculum that puts students’ lives at the center

    17. When I stopped attending to test scores and started listening to the music of my students’ voices and seeing them as “more than a score,” I increased my capacity to engage them. I knew what didn’t work, but I still didn’t know what did work.

      When we focus on test scores, what are the things that go out of focus for us?

    18. I still hadn’t created classrooms that matched the classroom in my imagination, where students read, argued, and wrote passionately.

      I am reminded of the blog post I read of Dana Huff, who reflected on her realization of lack of texts around LGBT issues, and her struggle to find that right balance.

      Read Dana's piece: http://www.huffenglish.com/slice-of-life-writing-a-rationale/

      In a comment back to my comment to her, Dana wrote:

      ... there are circumstances that have arisen in my community that have given me pause and shocked me out of my complacency.

      This is what connected her text to this text ....

    19. They rebelled. They hated the class. They didn’t come or they acted up when they attended. They didn’t do the work.

      The fact that Linda noticed this, and then used this for her reflective act of change, says a lot. Perhaps too many of us see this kind of shut-down, and blame the students, not ourselves.

  8. Nov 2017
    1. civic identity development must be analyzed through three overlapping lenses—the social interactions that occur between individuals, the cultural practices that structure these interactions, and the institutions in which these interactions occur (p. 141)

      highlighting to hold onto these 3 lens

    2. so are interactions with government representatives and agencies, and research shows that negative con-tact with public officials can have a dampening effect on willingness to participate in public life

      Important. Schools are included in this.

    3. we argue for a critical vision of citizenship that can counter the dominant perspective that young American of color are civically disengaged and instead acknowledge the innovative ways in which they are participating in civic life

      highlighting this call to action.

    4. interrogating normative civic practices and structures and innovat-ing new forms of civic action

      I like this, not just participating but interrogating. In CLMOOC research we found that just being open isn't enough and have looked at some language from participatory design work around "infrastructuring" that gets more to this focus on being active agents and not just participants.

    5. we argue that they must be willing to explore the varied experiences of citizenship that students bring to school

      What are some ways that this conversation is invited in schools? Any examples anyone here has to share?

    6. .
    7. “Groups with power and influence often equate their own interests with the public interest” (p. 131). A normative vision of citi-zenship does not comport with a society structured by systemic racial inequalities.

      Highlighting.

    8. indeed, relying on these skills as measures of engagement is an ideological choice that inevitably minimizes or ignores the value of other skills and, in turn, contributes to a narrow and exclusionary vision of who does and does not count as a good citizen

      Highlighting the ideological aspect and the impact of that in excluding and narrowing our vision of what it means to be a citizen.

    9. its ability to sustain civic solidar-ity is perhaps most visible as a result of recent and ongoing movements such as #BlackLivesMatter

      I understand the value of mobilization and awareness, but I also understand the critiques of "clicktivism" or "slactivism." I think the better, less judgmental term is "hashtag activism," as used by Bonilla and Rosa 2015, #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnogrpahy, and the racial politics of social media in the United States (not sure if this link is behind a paywall or not). But then again, a former student of mine who this time last year was a viral photo and BLM activist is now a Charlotte City Council Member, having received the second-highest number of votes for an at-large seat this past Tuesday. How do we understand the continuum between hashtag and 'real' activism?

    10. By looking at how individuals might collaborate when socializing in virtual worlds like World of Warcraft or Second Life (Boellstorff, 2008, Chen 2011; Nardi, 2010) or

      I've taught both the Boellstorff and Nardi ethnographies in my digital anthropology class (http://digital.anthro-seminars.net/), and I'm very conscious of the ephemerality of cyberspace (itself a term that is less commonly used nowadays). This semester, while we didn't read the whole books, they read articles by Boellstorff - I had to explain what Second Life was, show them the trailer of Life 2.0, and it still seemed to the students like a far-off, historical way of living, as exotic as the Amish.

    11. Best practices in civic education—as synthesized by a part-nership of business, foundation, and research groups—include formal instruction in government and civics, discussion of controversial social issues, service learning, and participation in school governance (Gould, 2011).

      So important the way these authors challenge contemporary "best practices." This connects back to another piece co-authored by Antero Garcia featured in last year's #marginalsyllabus which pointed out the way notions of best practice are problematic. Here's an annotation about from that text.

    12. move beyond practices of civic participation

      I don't want to speak too soon, but this concerns me. I'm all for imagining new kinds of civic participation or "innovation," but at some point there needs to be a connection to the established means of engagement and action, right? If everyone is just Tweeting and note marching or Tweeting and not voting, then we have a kind of virtual movement.

    13. media outlets

      And social media platforms. Check out Safiya Noble's work on "Algorithms of Oppression."

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRVZozEEWlE

    14. What does it mean to educate toward civic engagement in a society in which progress occurs not inevitably or in a straight line but instead in stops, starts, and retreats?

      I love the phrasing of this question. It perfectly captures what @dogrtrax calls the messiness of it all above.

    15. we find it important to highlight its potential to instigate sociopolitical innovation

      For all the frequent grumbles about the passivity of most forms of Twitter activism, this was a moment in which the form fit perfectly with the message: The goal of #MeToo, as Milano’s friend told her, was simply to give people a sense of “the magnitude of the problem.”

      excerpted from The Movement of #MeToo by Sophie Gilbert

    16. In looking at youth socialization, engagement, and forms of shared governance in interest-driven spaces like online gaming and fandom communities, Mimi Ito etal. (2015) describes the value of understanding the “little p” politics that youth engage in regularly (p. 162).

      It seems important to me that educators actively value "little p" politics. Youth who haven't engaged in traditionally valued forms of civic participation bring background from spaces like Minecraft servers, where they encounter things like:

    17. YPAR happens in a variety of learning contexts, from classrooms and after-school programs to community organizations and universities, and amplifies the voices of young people from elementary school to college and beyond through a range of activities.

      Yes for amplification ...

    18. Though some pundits have dismissed the uses of online media for civic change as “clicktivism” or “slacktivism” (Gladwell, 2010; Morozov, 2011), its ability to sustain civic solidar-ity is perhaps most visible as a result of recent and ongoing movements such as #BlackLivesMatter

      I wish there were even more examples that demonstrated the power of hashtags as a gathering point for action beyond a tweet. But I suspect there are -- beyond my own small field of vision, right? I hope so.

    19. if youth today possess the tools for producing, distributing, and coordinating civic messages via digital technologies, the opportuni-ties for learning about civic engagement are no longer tethered to traditional spaces like classrooms.

      Here is a key element ... how school do or do not provide these kinds of learning opportunities for our students ... perhaps this is why so many after-school programs are funded by foundations. Untethering action from traditional settings is difficult work, but reaching all students with this potential is important (not just those in after-school programming) -- sorry, that was a little aside

    20. while much of the language around digital civic engagement focuses on increasing youth participation in public life, we argue that students’ use of social media tools can start to change the conversation from one about merely participating toward one about interrogating normative civic practices and structures and innovat-ing new forms of civic action.

      A shift ...

    21. civic education involves the process by which young people gain knowledge, skills, and identities that they use to understand and participate in these forms of community life.

      Nicely defined ...

    22. While we recognize citizenship as a concept that can complicate, challenge, or even transcend national borders, our primary focus here remains on civic engage-ment and disparities in the U.S. context

      Yes, good to acknowledge the messiness of all of this.

    23. much of the civic education young people experience in school encourages them to engage in public life based on the core assumption that the infrastructure of our democracy is sound—that all citizens enjoy equitable access to opportunity and can use the tools of self-governance to remedy any threats to such opportunity. Our schools largely educate toward the Dream.

    24. We consider the ways in which digital media has fundamentally transformed the public sphere and expanded opportunities for youth civic expression and action

      This is what we hope. And have hoped. All the news about how tech/social media have systematically turned a blind eye on abuse in their own networks, in order to pave the way to the bank with barrels of cash in return for our data and privacy, makes me dubious and concerned, and I hate feeling that way. I'll read on ...

    25. Chapter 6

      This chapter by Nicole and Antero is associated with an issue of the journal Review of Research in Education that explores the theme "Disrupting Inequality Through Education Research." If Marginal Syllabus participants are interested in other articles from this issue and do not have access via an academic institution, please contact me privately (i.e. via Twitter DM, I'm @remikalir) and we'll make arrangements.

    26. Nicole MirraThe University of Texas at El PasoaNtero GarciaColorado State University

      Our thanks to partner authors Nicole Mirra and Antero Garcia for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! We anticipate that Nicole and Antero will join our annotation conversation throughout November. In addition, please check out these additional resources:

      • Nicole and Antero will be featured in an episode of Connected Learning TV, alongside Marginal Syllabus organizers Joe Dillon and Remi Kalir, scheduled to air on Tuesday, November 7th. We will update this annotation and embed the video once it's recorded.
      • Antero was also a partner author during the 2016-17 Marginal Syllabus. Antero and co-author Cindy O’Donnell-Allen contributed the introduction from their book Pose, Wobble, and Flow: A Culturally Proactive Approach to Literacy Instruction. You are very welcome to read and join that previous annotation conversation, too.
    27. If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:

    28. Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus and November's conversation! This is the second text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.

    1. Maha Bali and Autumm Caines wrote a review of this report, and raise some interesting points to consider: http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/equity-in-edtech-a-report-review/64513

    2. Hi everyone, this recent report from Justin Reich and Mimi Ito has a lot of resonance with the Marginal Syllabus topic for this year. Wondering if others might like to annotate with me? Please feel free to join in!

    1. truly pursue its lofty goals

      Again, which seems to be a problem for most of these critiques, is the acceptance of fb's claims about who/what they are. FB started as a way to rate college students based on their looks. It's now the biggest surveillance engine the world has ever seen. Zuck pitches "community" but users of the platform have no rights other than those granted by Zuck, no ability to make or change the rules of the "community" and no choice in how that "community" uses their data. It's telling that users are an afterthought in most of these suggestions.

    2. Whistle-blowers and dissidents might need to use a different platform.)

      The way that he casually mentions whistle blowers and dissidents is troubling to say the least. Also, will dig up studies, but removing anonymity hasn't really shown to decrease trolling or other bad behavior. Also, "privacy" anyone?

      http://theweek.com/articles/632929/problem-internet-trolls-isnt-anonymity

    3. Given this problem, Facebook needs to help us unite by building new sharing tools based on trust and respect.

      I respect Albright, but this buys into the notion of "sharing" that facebook (and other platforms tbh) have sold us. The model of fb is to monetize our relationships and control the feed to maximize engagement. This is antithetical to trust and respect--the information asymmetry and lack of user control don't allow for trust or respect.

    4. 100 percent of individuals verified

      Again, this is a bit problematic given the whole "use your real name" thing that happened a couple of years ago, when people were getting kicked off for using their chosen names (esp. queer people, in the examples I remember). Like Jeremy alludes below, it's a fine line because unequal power means that policies have different effects on different people...

    5. solutions

      I also wonder about the difference between "solutions" and "alternatives."

  9. Oct 2017
    1. Can Hypothes.is modify our sensibilities in school–maybe even in the profession? Or will our prior habits of snark and compliance win out?

      I'll hope for the first and worry about the second. And will resist the snark here ... :)

    2. On the one hand, marginal refers to texts and perspectives that are counternarratives to dominant educational discourses and contexts. And on the other, marginal also indicates the location of annotation in the margins of a text. 

      Are you seeing this happening? Are there places where you have surfaced marginal views and perspectives in texts from the margins? Not just us "usual folks" but a more expansive set of voices? Have you been choosing pieces that cross the wide political spectrum or have they been mostly from the margins on the Left? I'm not critiquing ... just wondering. I know this is difficult work, and appreciate the ways that Marginal Syllabus is always inviting folks in.

    3. Hypothesis is integrated into open education resources (OER) via student-created textbooks

      This is an interesting concept ... merging crowd annotations into an open textbook format ... I can see a lot of logistical issues, but the potential for shared knowledge, and insights, and points of view could be intriguing!

    4. Students

      I was one of the open students of NetNarr, and that potential of merging a class of students with open participants via something like Hypothesis has potential for enriching conversations and differing viewpoints (not sure NetNarr quite got there but it showed a way forward)

    5. You can access our session slides here.

      Thanks for sharing ...

    1. digital natives

    2. In our academic lives, we have books and articles that we regularly return to. The dog-eared pages of these treasured readings contain lines of text etched with questions or reflections. It's difficult to imagine a similar level of engagement with a digital text. There should probably always be a place for print in students' academic lives -- no matter how technologically savvy they become.

      I agree, but know more and more folks may start to argue against this.

    3. What distinguished this atypical group was that they actually read slower when the text was on the computer than when it was in a book.

      I'd be curious to know what the digital text looked like -- did it have media embedded in it? Links? Distractions?