Blogs on Media Literacy

Just recently I was lucky enough to attend a Hackjam session at the wonderful Educon conference here in Philadelphia. After we hacked Monopoly by reinventing the game, we were introduced to the tool Hackasaurus, which allows students to not only see, but manipulate the code on a website.

Start with Courage

In 1969, RAND political analyst Daniel Ellsberg risked espionage charges by photocopying secret Pentagon Papers that documented how U.S. presidents lied to the American public about military escalation plans in Vietnam and lied about its chances of success. In the documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America, a reporter interviews Ellsberg after the famous whistleblower gave himself up to the authorities for leaking boxes of information to media:

REPORTER: Dr. Ellsberg, do you have any concern about the possibility of going to prison for this?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Wouldn't you go to prison to help end this war?

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As many of my readers know, my classes are currently mimicking a TED conference by writing Advocacy/Memoir speeches of their own as a means to learn a more real-world version persuasive writing. That is, they are studying the structure of many of the TED speeches online

It's award season, so I'm giving my students an award. A major award! I'm honoring them for stepping outside the comfort zone of the school system that they have been subject to for most of their lives, authoring their own learning, and in the process, enjoying it. However, this transition did not come easily, and it took them some time to adjust to this format. It's a format where they are no longer the recipients of their learning; now they're the authors.