I’d like to share the ups and downs (in reverse order) of week 2 of #DigPINS with you.
We in the cohort were asked to find and follow authors and movements online related to our digital pedagogy or identity. Based on a recent listen to an old (2015) episode of the Trek Geeks podcast, I searched for the current status of “Enterprise in Space” project which aimed to inspire K-12 and university students worldwide by launching a sci-fi-themed (real) space mission with student experiments and participation. Unfortunately, it looks like the project is now low on fuel as its URL gives a 503 error, so I’m not sure how much of the project goal was achieved in the last five years. One bright spot is that there appears to still be an active Facebook presence for the project, which is promoting uplifting space news, self-directed learning, and ongoing podcast interviews on a podcast I am not (yet) familiar with.
And now for the highlights of the week from the content shared by the #DigPINS facilitators:
Maha Bali’s blog post on Critical Digital Citizenship inspired me to think about digital community service and digital student exchange. Having grown up with “community service” tied to hours of physical work that had to be approved by a responsible adult in order to achieve high school milestones, I didn’t realize that community service could exist online, that it could be done in five-minute chunks, and I had already been engaged in digital community service for some time. Second, my engineering students, like Maha’s students, could benefit from a semester-long international exchange without the cost of travel, mediated over online communication with a university pen pal. I can see a huge benefit for a mechatronics engineering student getting ready to enter the workforce in metro Detroit to have experienced a months-long dialog with a young engineer or technician in say Mexico, India, Vietnam, or elsewhere in the developing world.
Alec Couros and Katia Hildebrandt’s article gave me a primer in digital forgiveness, which is important to me because analog/offline forgiveness has been so important to my spiritual journey. I’m especially touched by their writing that an individual’s online history matters and by the suggested questions to ask ourselves when evaluating an online artifact: “Does the artefact appear to be a one time thing, or is it part of a longer pattern of problematic content/behaviour? Has there been a sincere apology, and is there evidence that the person has learned from the incident? How would we react to the incident in person? Would we forever shame the person or would we resolve the matter through dialogue?” I should be careful to not make a snap judgement of another person online, but to seek a dialog, if possible.
My favorite part of the week: the optional “play” task.
I cannot say enough good things about this helpful and artistic explainer of COVID-19 models and scenarios amid the current global pandemic: https://ncase.me/covid-19/ It even hinted at the reason why we should get a flu shot every year for the regular flu. The team that made the web tool deserves a big “Thank you!” I hope to check out more of their web explainers.
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