Media Literacy Roundup: 28 Jan 2024
Periodic links and ideas from Wes Fryer
Welcome to another intermittent edition of my email newsletter! We’re a month into 2024 and I hope you are healthy, well in every way you can be, and living your best life: Doing meaningful work with inspiring colleagues who “fill your cup” with joy each day! Here a few things I’ve been creating and consuming lately (related to media literacy) that may be of interest. Contents for this edition include:
Teaching the Conspiracies!
Archived “AI PlayDate Resources”
Journalism Disruption Explained
Blog Theme Update
Coding with AI
Meet Me at NCTIES 2024
“Heal Our Culture” Project Resources
1. Teaching the Conspiracies!
In some ways when it comes to presenting and sharing at educational conferences, I feel like “a bear who has been in hibernation!” You can visually see this when you look at my handouts / presentations wiki and compare the number of presentations from 2010 - 2018 to the small number in 2019 to the present. This pattern is changing in 2024!
I’m excited to share that I’m now an “affiliated faculty member” with the Media Education Lab, the WONDERFUL organizational sponsor and networking hub of media literacy educators with whom I’ve been learning, sharing and growing as a professional since 2019.
This week on January 31, 2024, I’m excited to start facilitating a six week online course for educators titled, “Teaching the Conspiracies.” This “anytime learning course” is offered as part of the 2024 MediaED Institute by the Media Education Lab, Learn more about this course (and watch my 17 minute “week 1 introduction and course overview” on my latest blog post, “Teaching the Conspiracies!”
Access many more of my recommended media literacy resources on medialiteracy.wesfryer.com.
2. Archived “AI PlayDate Resources”
On December 27, 2023 and January 20, 2024, I facilitated two “AI PlayDate” professional development meetups over Zoom, focused on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) as educators. Resources and shared links (as well as a partial recording from January 20th) are available on the PlayDate CLT website.
I hope to lead and share more of these in upcoming months! Subscribe / follow my “Speed of Creativity Facebook Page” to stay updated, I’ll be adding new “AI PlayDate Events” to that page!
My favorite part of these meetups was hearing the STORIES of AI use from different educators. I’m considering writing a book around that theme, building on my 2011 book (now VERY outdated!) “Playing with Media: Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing.”
3. Journalism Disruption Explained
The “Hard Fork” podcast by Casey Newton and Kevin Roose is one of my favorite technology podcasts these days. Their latest episode, “Mediapocalypse Now + a16z’s Chris Dixon Defends Crypto + HatGPT” includes 1 of the best explanations of the disruptions and disintermediation continuing to affect news, & journalism I have ever heard. I highly recommend it!
In the podcast, Casey recommends two “next generation” news and media cooperatives which are making the kinds of direct connections to their audience which he and Kevin recommend. Those are Defector and 404Media, definitely news sites worth checking out too.
4. Blog Theme Update
After 11 years with the same WordPress blog theme, this weekend I finally upgraded my primary blog, “Moving at the Speed of Creativity!” Back in December 2012, I paid Jackson Greathouse Fall (then a high school student at Classen School of Advanced Studies where our kids attended) to create a custom theme for both my blog and my personal website, wesfryer.com. I would love any feedback and suggestions you have on the new theme: It’s just a customized version of the standard (and free) Twenty Twenty-Three theme.
The reasons for this upgrade are geeky, but it gives me great pleasure to have figured these things out!
My Podlove Publisher WordPress plugin required a server upgrade to PHP 8.0
Other plug-in incompatibilities were causing my site to “break” when I tried to upgrade my PHP
Troubleshooting those issues required disabling ALL 14 of my WordPress plug-ins and re-enabling them one by one.
I’m VERY happy to use the “Social Icons Block” built-in to WordPress to share some of my social media channels at the top and bottom of all my blog pages. Now I need to update my “Connect” or “After” page (which comprehensively links to all the spaces I share and others can connect with / learn with me) so it looks “cleaner” with a similarly simple design.
5. Coding with AI
It’s mind blowing to code with AI tools like ChatGPT 4! My latest AI coding experiment was creating a “Random Roll Call Question Generator.” It uses embedded JavaScript which does NOT call any external APIs, since I’m using it on a Google Site. I documented this “playing with AI” example on my “AI Tips Google Doc,” including the full archive of “my conversation” with ChatGPT.
6. Meet Me at NCTIES 2024
I’m presenting 4 sessions this year at the NC-TIES 2024 Conference (North Carolina Educational Technology) in Raleigh. My accepted sessions are:
SIFTing for Trusted Sources Online
The detailed schedule is not finalized yet, but these sessions will be shared either March 7 or or March 8, 2024. This will be the first time I’ve shared presentations at a state-level educational technology conference in awhile.
I’ve added these links to my Handouts / Presentations website, which includes links (if available) to all the keynotes, workshops and presentations I’ve shared since 2010.
7. “Heal Our Culture” Project Resources
Last year I started a resource webpage for a new inquiry project I’m calling, “Heal Our Culture.” Friday evening and yesterday, Shelly (my wife) and I attended a wonderful “Racial Healing Retreat” at our church (Caldwell Presbyterian) in Charlotte. I have not written a blog post about the experience and my takeaways yet, but I did share a few ideas and links during the conference on Mastodon using the hashtag, #HealOurCulture. I’m hoping to start a new and separate podcast for “Heal Our Culture” soon.
Next weekend Shelly and I are attending the 3rd annual “Confronting Whiteness Conference” in Charlotte, hosted by Myers Park Baptist Church. The theme of this year’s conference is, “The Case for Reparations.”
This is the current draft for the “About this project” page:
"Heal Our Culture" as an inquiry project by Dr. Wesley Fryer of Matthews, North Carolina. In multiple ways, we need to work together to heal our culture from the wounds and scars of the past, which include systemic racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, religious bigotry, and a variety of other discriminatory policies, attitudes and behaviors. In addition, we need campaign finance reform, criminal justice reform, and health care reform. We need to end the widespread, toxic worship of tactical firearms. We need to respect and celebrate diversity in all its forms as well as cultivate resilient skills and dispositions as informed, saavy citizens of our communities, states, nations and world. Overall (especially in the United States) we need to CARE FOR EACH OTHER more, and elevate the cultural values of love, kindness, respect, patience, gentleness, and listening.
These topics are very politically sensitive today, but also extremely important culturally. I’ve started a Facebook page for the “Heal Our Culture” project, and I invite you to both join it and share it.
Have a great week!