Media Literacy Roundup: 2 August 2025
Media, Links and Reflections from Wes Fryer
Happy August 2025 everyone! This 2025-26 academic year I’m going to try and share a monthly “media literacy roundup” like this one. In this edition I’ll share:
August 4th Zoom Webinar: “Searching With AI: Can We Trust the New Gatekeepers?”
Is Any AI Use Ethical?
“Civics of Technology” Community and Links
Pinboard Bookmarks and Podcast Recommendations
More Vibe Coding with AI
Summer STEM Camp Lessons
1. August 4th Zoom Webinar: “Searching With AI: Can We Trust the New Gatekeepers?”
Please make plans to join me on Monday, August 4th (noon ET / 11am CT / 10am MT / 9am PT) for our monthly Zoom webinar for the MediaEd Club of the Media Education Lab! It’s free and always informative. This month our topic is, “Searching With AI: Can We Trust the New Gatekeepers?” The webinar description is:
With AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude reshaping how people search for information, traditional search engines like Google face new competition—and new scrutiny. But as more users turn to generative AI for answers, critical questions arise: How reliable are these AI "searches"? What happens when algorithms hallucinate facts, reflect hidden biases, or omit information entirely? Join the MediaEd Club as we explore the promises and pitfalls of AI-powered search, the growing debate over AI guardrails, and what this means for media literacy and education.
As always, I’ve shared a short list of recommended links which are great to check out in advance of the webinar, if you have time to prepare a bit. These usually include at least one audio podcast and/or video. This month I used Google’s Notebook LM AI platform to create a 30 minute “deep dive podcast” which summarizes and analyzes eight different articles highlighting how a transition is underway to AI powered search.
2. Is Any AI Use Ethical?
As a current middle school classroom teacher in 2025, I believe it’s essential we discuss and explore the ethics of artificial intelligence / AI platforms and technologies. We are poised for another challenging school year in K12 education and higher education for multiple reasons, and a big one is the challenge which AI poses to “traditional assessments” and graded classroom activities. The rise of “surveillance capitalism” and its manifestations in classroom surveillance of both students and teachers is another big issue. My recent participation in the 2025 “Civics of Technology” conference was a helpful catalyst for me in my own thinking about AI ethics. Check out my latest blog post, “Is Any AI Use Ethical?” for more on these themes as well as recommended links to explore about AI ethics.
3. “Civics of Technology” Community and Links
As I just mentioned, the 2025 “Civics of Technology” conference I attended virtually on 31 July and 1 August 2025 was FANTASTIC, and provided me with a wealth of ideas, links, but also personal networking connections that deeply enriched my own learning this summer as I get ready for the 2025-26 academic year.
“Civics of Technology” is a grassroots organization which:
…aims to empower students and educators to critically inquire into the effects of technologies on their individual and collective lives. We conduct research, develop curriculum, and offer professional development. Our work seeks to advance democratic, ethical, and just uses of technology in schools and society.
“About Us.” Civics of Technology, https://www.civicsoftechnology.org/aboutus. Accessed 1 Aug. 2025.
Here are a few links to notes and reflections on the conference which I created, as well as networking links to check out.
BlueSky starter pack of Civics of Technology educators / leaders / conference participants to follow (maintained by Dan Krutka)
My Day 1 reflection on the "2025 Civics of Technology Conference”
All my notes from #CivicsOfTech25, shared as a Google Doc
4. Pinboard Bookmarks and Podcast Recommendations
Remember the social bookmarking (“web 2.0”) tools del.icio.us and diigo?!
Thanks to the ever-inspiring modeling of EdTech yoda and jedi master Alan Levine, this summer I started using pinboard.in for both social bookmarking and podcast listening recommendations.
Follow my Pinboard on pinboard.in/u:wfryer. I shared more about how I auto-post my Pinboard podcast recommendations to Mastodon in my 28 June blog post, “RSS Converter for MastoFeed.”
5. More Vibe Coding with AI
Artificial Intelligence / AI hype is personally challenging for me to filter, analyze and understand. The July 25th episode of the “Hard Fork” podcast included a variety of AI hype critics and AI Luddites, and I continue to wrestle with what I believe and accept in terms of predictions about the future of AI and the proper roles of educators in our dynamic technology-infused environment.
While there are lots of important debates about AI ethics, AGI, AI search, and other AI related topics, discussions about coding with AI are clearer and more understandable to me. The reason is that for the past two years, I’ve been successfully “vibe coding” with AI and sharing my working code creations on GitHub. I’m convinced as a current middle school computer programming teacher that AI will forever change coding. Why would I ever want to spend hours chasing down syntax errors in my code, when an AI coding assistant like Cursor can instantaneously help me proofread and fix my code?!
I wrote more about these topics in my July 5th blog post, “Vibe Coding for Flickr CC 4.0 Attribution.” Check out the javascript program I created (and used for the image attribution captions in this newsletter, btw) on GitHub and live on wesfryer.com/cc/.
6. Summer STEM Camp Lessons
My spouse, Shelly, and I taught a variety of STEM-focused summer camps for students this past June and July. Check out our shared lessons:
Rocket Camp! (by Shelly)
Creating Cool Websites (by Wes)
Video Game Workshop (by Wes)
Have a great August of media literacy learning!