Even more relevant and essential

I haven’t published The Interconnect for a few months but I have been working backstage. I mentioned that I was taking some time out in my last post, “Poetry is an egg with a horse inside it,” to complete a book and publish it. A lot has transpired in the world since that October 5 post.

If anything, some of the resources I have championed here in these past months have become even more relevant and essential.

For example, the work of the Digital Inquiry Group, formerly the Stanford History Education Group or SHEG…now DIG. Watch this 4 minute video for a preview of the work in action.

Here’s an excerpt from the post What’s at Stake? on the website:

A survey we did with thousands of students from middle school to college showed the depth of the challenge. Eighty-two percent of middle school students mistook advertisements for news. High school students took an image posted anonymously on a photo sharing site as evidence of the ecological effects of a nuclear disaster. College students rated a splinter group of pediatricians (labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center) as more reliable than the 64,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics.

We found that many of the ideas students brought to the internet, such as be suspicious of .com URLs but trust .org URLs, haven't been true since dial-up modems were used to get online.

Learn more about DIG here. I recommend creating an account and carefully exploring their Civic Online Reasoning curriculum.

I also recommend that you get to know and if you can, subscribe to, School Library Journal or SLJ. Frequent this page on their site where they track censorship in libraries and public schools across the country.

What I am reading—the new and the old

Thanks to a great friend who sent me the link, I am reading Earthwards: Transformative Ecological Education by Katharine Burke. I just downloaded the ebook so I’ll let you know in a future post what I think about it.

I’ve been revisiting some classics. I recently reread Environmental Literacy: Education as if the Earth Mattered. It’s a lecture presented by David W. Orr at the 12th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, 31 October 1992, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It stands up to the test of time. If you don’t know David Orr, get to know him. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus at Oberlin College, and Professor of Practice at Arizona State University.

I have hard copy of the lecture from way back in the day but I located it for you to read online here.

While I am wrapping up my book Red-winged Blackbird Calls Me Home, I will be writing The Interconnect a bit more intermittently. I have paused payments until after the first of the year when I hope to publish the book and resume my weekly posts again, offering thoughts and resources on technology, nature, kids, well-being. Thanks so much for reading. I really appreciate your support, enthusiasm, and commitment. Be well.