Presentation into Practice: What I learned from the NAMLE Conference
Civics of Tech Announcements
3rd Annual Conference Announcement: Our third annual Civics of Technology conference will be held online on August 1st, from 11-4 pm EST and on August 2nd, 2024 from 11-3pm! Our featured keynotes will be Dr. Tiera Tanksley and Mr. Brian Merchant. Even thought he conference is free, you must register and we must be able to verify your identity to attend. You can find the conference schedule and more on our 2024 conference page.
Monthly Tech Talk on Tuesday, 08/06/24. Join our monthly tech talks to discuss current events, articles, books, podcast, or whatever we choose related to technology and education. There is no agenda or schedule. Our next Tech Talk will be on Tuesday, August 6th, 2024 at 8-9pm EST/7-8pm CST/6-7pm MST/5-6pm PST. Learn more on our Events page and register to participate.
September Book Club: For our next book club we will read Ashley Shew’s 2023 book, Against Technoableism Rethinking Who Needs Improvement. We will meet at 8pm EDT on Thursday, September 12th, 2024. You can register on our events page.
by Dan Krutka
I attended the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) Conference the last couple days (Friday, 07/12 and Saturday, 07/13). The conference was well organized, inspiring, and practical. Fortunately, NAMLE’s conference format is similar in a lot of ways… both conferences are fully online over two days and attend to media/technology. While NAMLE focuses on communication media and Civics of Tech takes a bit broader look at media, a lot of sessions focused on topics that will be taken up in our community. Is anyone surprised that youth social media use, GenAI, and media and the election are topics of concern across communities?
Every session I attended was high quality and well organized. I really appreciated how the opening keynote brought together a panel from different sectors—a school librarian advocate, librarian science professor, classroom teacher, and a government/non-profit worker—to address issues of disinformation, book bans, and more. The stories panelists put into focus the profound challenges we face in the U.S., but they also offered stories of hope and action.
Most sessions included either presentations or panel discussions with 5-10 minutes at the end for audience questions. I enjoyed this model because it allowed me to move around (and even workout) while watching sessions. If you plan for your session to be participatory throughout at Civics of Tech, we should let folks know.
At Civics of Tech, we may have a tendency for recommending books to each other at every turn! “Have you read this book?” “You should read this book.” This is a big reason I love Civics of Tech and learn so much from our book clubs (plug: Register to join us for a discussion of Ashley Shew’s Rethinking Who Needs Improvement on Tuesday, September 12th, 2024 on our events page). However, I also want those resources that I can put into practice, and a number of NAMLE sessions delivered. Here are two such sessions:
Digital Storytelling Across Mediums: Lessons for Engagement by Dr. Danielle Bainbridge, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Black Studies, and Performance Studies at Northwestern University: I already knew Dr. Bainbridge because I had watched some of her excellent “Origin of Everything” YouTube videos on the PBS Origins channel. In her session, she walked us through her media creation assignments in her classes. First, she encourages students to share their stories by focusing on their interests and passions. She mentioned that during the emergency online teaching of the pandemic she asked students to create videos of their physical spaces as a way to share their experiences with each other. She allows students to choose their topics and grades them on meeting the assignment criteria. They have “creativity within constraints.” You can tell that Dr. Bainbridge cares about her students and is excited to learn from them. Second, I really appreciated how she encouraged students to match the medium to their message. In other words, students had to differentiate between whether they sought to share an emotional story or convey factual information and then decide which medium worked best for their intended audience. I’ve too often seen assignments where students can share via any medium—often under the guise of multiliteracies—without recognition that papers, infographics, podcasts, and TikToks do not convey information in the same ways. By the end of the session, I was easily able to envision how I could modify assignments to include digital storytelling in my classes.
Algorithmic Awareness: A Key Component of Modern Media Literacy by Dr. Scott H. Moss. I reluctantly have decided that I have to learn more about AI and GenAI if I’m going to be able to make decisions and say anything meaningful about it. Dr. Moss’ presentation offered a ton of resources for learning more and learning with students… best of all, it doesn’t require you to use all the crappy and ecologically-devastating GenAI chatbots that are flooding the market now. I loved that the session was targeted toward audience members with “beginner, intermediate, expert” experience… Everyone was welcome! Here’s four resources I found helpful (and I apologize to Dr. Moss in advance if I explained any of this poorly):
Input–Process–Output (IPO) model: Computer Science (CS) concepts can often seem overwhelming to educators not in the field, but the IPO model allows for an easy way to discuss how computer programs run. Something is input, there is a process, and then something is output. Dr. Moss used examples such as cooking a cake to help students think about this process and then transfer it to computers.
5 Big Ideas of AI: Determining where to start with AI can be challenging and this 5 big ideas graphic, which is available in a number of languages, offers a nice starting point. The 5 big ideas are: perception, representation & reasoning, learning, nature interaction, and societal impact. Dr. Moss then used different examples and asked students "Is this AI?"
AI for Oceans: With this fun game from Code.org, students can learn about machine learning and ethical use of AI.
Computers v. Crime NOVA documentary: Finally, when Dr. Moss was discussing algorithmic bias, a participant shared this NOVA documentary in the chat. While we have discussed Joy Buolamwini’s book and the Uncoded Bias documentary, this is a new one to me. The description of the documentary reads, “In police departments and courts across the country, artificial intelligence is being used to help decide who is policed, who gets bail, how offenders should be sentenced, and who gets parole. But is it actually making our law enforcement and court systems fairer and more just? This timely investigation digs into the hidden biases, privacy risks, and design flaws of this controversial technology.” I look forward to watching it and sharing it with students.
Big thanks of the NAMLE presenters, staff, and community for an educational experience at the conference. I can’t wait for our Civics of Technology conference coming up. For our presenters, you might consider, what will participants in your session take away that they can put into practice?