I agree, but know more and more folks may start to argue against this.

I'd be curious to know what the digital text looked like -- did it have media embedded in it? Links? Distractions?

So, a self-reflection activity might be helpful and then providing choice for students ...

Good point. I suspect that even in schools where one-to-one and iPad distribution has happened, print is still often being used as an anchor text format (or so I hope)

I wonder if the marking up of text, and how it was done, matters. Did they know about search functions on a page of digital text? Did they use highlighters and marks on paper? I think there is some visual memory cues that come into play on paper (remembering the general location of an idea or fact, as if the paper were a map and your memory a sort of compass) as opposed to a digital page that has no real anchors. Interesting.

This is interesting ... I want to know more ... I would think it would be more the media and hyperlinks that would lead to less comprehension, not the act of scrolling through text on the digital page.

See note about how you started this piece ...

Really? This is how you start the piece, using this outdated and wrong reference point about the Native/Immigrant divide. Really?

I thought it would be worthwhile to parse this piece ... you are invited ....

Comedy/sarcasm/satire is often viewed as a means of avoiding real issues, but I agree that these can be key societal preparatory tools when revolutionary change is needed. Looking forward to Yomna's work!

How do we let them know that their voices are needed and valued?

For me this speaks to the importance of meeting youth where they are (in digital spaces as well as emotionally/intellectually) and having a good sense of youth culture. Staying current and connected is a big challenge for educators, and by incorporating spaces that are currently being used by youth into our curriculum we can meet younger generations where they are and "speak their language".

How do we support learners who find themselves, and the narratives and assumptions about their lives, ascribed political meanings in this way?

One thing I noticed is in the video is not only the powerful way she connects with her listeners by beginning with her own intimate discussion of faith, but the way she sets that next to the negative examples from social media. It is a powerful argument. It struck me when she even corrected her error in an edit as well regarding the inaccurate citation of a Trump tweet. So much going on here.

This feels critical to me and something that could be further explored here -- how Communities of Practice support leadership development and action (for youth as well as adults). I see this in my own work at the National Writing Project -- we work together as teachers and writers to develop our practice. And in the process become leaders who can act when/as needed.

Lave and Wenger are important resources in this part of the discussion: http://infed.org/mobi/jean-lave-etienne-wenger-and-communities-of-practice/

This activism plays out in large part on commercial channels and it seems like the platform providers don't have to prove this at all. Instead, all they have to do is maintain their industry dominance and marginalized folks will have to compromise their data and privacy while playing by the rules of Silicon Valley.

Our news cycles and the narratives we craft to fit inside the cycles demonstrate that we might not have the attention span to understand the continuing struggles and the slow ebb and flow of change. Power structures don't crumble under the weight of new media, rather they respond with counter measures.

It is definitely important that she has the agency, as a woman of color, to create a media channel where she can reach a broad audience.

Perhaps we put too much into the possibilities of technology to help facilitate change. Or perhaps our view of what change is becomes part of the problem, and technology both amplifies and dampens those notions.

Imagining is the first step towards doing ...

That intersection between entertainment and politics is an intriguing one, particularly in countries that see dissent as dangerous. Humor and music may provide a screen, right?

Me, too. I appreciate the honesty of the statement ...

Do you think there is more left-leaning activist youths doing this than right-leaning youths? It may be my own filter bubble, but I find it easier to discover progressive voices on the left than conservative voices on the right when it comes to youth movement with digital media. Can someone point me to places where I can hear those youth voices on the right?

How do we know this? How do we know when a message isn't caught in an echo chamber? I suppose YouTube might know this through its data but on the outside, we can only make assumptions that her powerful voice is being heard.

I wonder how many of her classmates watch her YouTube channel? What audience did she have in mind here? Was it to affirm her views on being an American and being a Muslim in Trumptimes, to help others like her? Or was it to provide a counter-narrative to the views of Muslims in America?

Here is her YouTube Channel ... https://www.youtube.com/user/NabelaNoor "Hey, e-cohort ..." she says on her opening video. I'm noticing that kind of invitation, and the acknowledgement of her audience.

It seems that there are some forces we want to counteract, namely technologies that capitalize on addiction, deception or control. Some opposing intentions might be:

1. developing user agency and attentional awareness
2. supporting understanding of evolving systems
3. democratization

We're really excited to launch the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus at the same time as the 2017 Digital Media and Learning Conference, held at UC Irvine. If you're attending DML and want to learn more about the Marginal Syllabus, many people from our organizing team will also be attending and can talk with you about using Hypothesis and joining these public annotation conversations:

• Christina Cantrill from the National Writing Project
• Liana Gamber-Thompson, from NWP's Educator Innovator
• Jeremy Dean, Director of Education at Hypothesis
• Remi Kalir, Asst Prof of Learning Technologies at CU Denver

The Marginal Syllabus will also be featured during the session "Layered Learning: Web Annotation in Collaborative and Connected Contexts," on Friday, October 6th, 2p in Emerald Bay DE.

Again, here's Marginal Syllabus partner author Sangita Shresthova's text "Between Storytelling and Surveillance: The Precarious Public of American Muslim Youth,” which was featured in the 2016-17 Marginal Syllabus.

Our thanks to partner author Henry Jenkins for contributing this important text to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! Henry previously contributed to the 2016-17 Syllabus last April; we read and annotated a chapter from By Any Media Necessary, by Sangita Shresthova, titled "Between Storytelling and Surveillance: The Precarious Public of American Muslim Youth." Sangita, Henry, and a number of other Marginal Syllabus collaborators - Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, Liana Gamber-Thompson, and Joe Dillon - joined a webinar about the text and our annotation conversation: https://youtu.be/E9NHC9YqOTg

If you are joining the Marginal Syllabus for the first time, or if you're using Hypothesis to publicly annotate an online text for the first time, here are a few useful resources:

• Getting started with Hypothesis
• Hypothesis education resources
• KQED's Digital Annotation with Hypothesis course, a great step-by-step primer
• Information about the Marginal Syllabus and our 2017-18 Syllabus hosted by the National Writing Project

Welcome to the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus! This is the first text we will read and publicly annotate as part of "Writing Our Civic Futures." The Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversation with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. The project's name, Marginal Syllabus, embraces a political and technical double entendre; we partner with authors whose writing may be considered marginal—or contrary—to dominant education norms, and online conversations with authors occur in the margins of their texts using web annotation. The Marginal Syllabus is a partnership with the National Writing Project, who is hosting the 2017-18 syllabus, and Hypothesis, an organization building an open platform for web annotation.

Here's another thing that really frustrates me about this letter, as much as I might agree with its broad brushstroke approach to advocating certain values - one of the most specific examples is an analogy (our garden patch)! I recognize that brevity was an authorial choice throughout, and that many specific examples were not included... so it's odd, to me, that an analogy was included rather than an example from an organization, or from the literature, or from history, or...

How? Not only does this letter lack specific recommendations for much of anything, including such public conversation, the limitations of this letter as noted by others - written online, written in English - already constrain notions of equitable participation. That being said, it is both awesome and a bit meta that this group of reader-annotators has taken it upon themselves to "build" (dare I say) one version of that public conversation using the open annotation platform Hypothesis - well done!

Thanks to Maha Bali for organizing this public annotation of an important text. As Maha mentioned briefly at the end of her blog post, the theme of this text and digciz conversation connects nicely with the 2017-18 Marginal Syllabus theme of Writing Our Civic Futures. For those who don't know, the Marginal Syllabus convenes and sustains conversations about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. Writing Our Civic Futures invites educators - and those who care about education, like students - to a year of social reading, collaborative web annotation, and public conversation that explores our civic imaginations and literacy landscapes. As civic engagement changes and evolves, Writing Our Civic Futures will consider implications for connected learning and teaching. Click here to learn more about Writing Our Civic Futures and the Marginal Syllabus. As you read and annotate this text, you're invited to tag your annotations with "marginalsyllabus" (as I've done, below). And we'll be sure to add The Copenhagen Letter to a list of complementary syllabus texts featured on the Marginal Syllabus website.

King's image and the civil rights movement are sanitized to make them more palatable for white society. How can contemporary teachers present a more realistic account of King and the movement to empower modern day activism?

This paragraph might deepen someone's interest in this text, Mia's work, and also spark participation in the conversation in the margins.

This is a valuable idea because of the way students move from being game players to game masters, and are engaged in critical literacy. I could easily see a students' selections taking a social justice bent related to race relations in the US.

Powerful societal elites, he claims, will always exist. Their concern lies with their finances rather than justice.

I look forward to learning what "toughest" means--as a character attribute or as a teacher characterization expressing how difficult Abaham was to 'teach' or...?

Walking away from this webinar tonight thinking about what critical work this is to do. We need to do it together. Thank you for being here and annotating with us.

Additional resources:

• Listen a NWP Radio interview with Bronwyn from February.
• Check out this excerpt from the book published at Mind/Shift
• Find out more/purchase the book at TC Press.

The stance the teacher takes relative to her work with students is both positive and in keeping with a view of the school as a learning organization.

This is why our systems must constantly search for ways to be more supportive and flexible.

High schoolers in particular have heard this all before.

Readers reading.

From a teacher's perspective, this feels so much like work avoidance but it is never really that simple.

This is the point we can arrive at with students. It is great when we have the tools to strip away the parts of school that might be getting in the way. There are systems constraints, for sure, but this chapter reveals that the real constraints are relationship constraints.

Interested to know more about this growing investment in the literature.

The goals for Abraham seem both appropriate and non-traditional.

A small but important detail - despite their conflict and mediation, Abraham could still text Bronwyn. Whenever a teacher, school, or district suggests limiting the means of accessibility and conversation among educators and students (including providing phone numbers), this story is a great example of why that matters.

This phrase was used earlier and I'd like to know more... which means I should probably read Bronwyn's entire book!

What a powerful reflection on a student-teacher relationship that eschews placing blame and rather seeks to find a sense of nuanced understanding in a rather complex human relationship. Thank you for sharing!

I appreciate this framing of writing as a collection of practices that mediates participation in various contexts, from the personal to the more academic and communal.

What a sobering analysis.

This alone can lead to a student becoming severely labelled. The relative privilege that Abraham seems to enjoy in this school setting is, in many ways, the opposite of what students in his circumstances feel.

Abraham's connection to school and learning seems precarious. The teens in the class can become taxed by these negotiations the same way a teacher can.

Different than grading or scoring as we traditionally understand it, LaMay views feedback structures as relationship dependent in the way that people who have spouses and children understand that they are.

I want to hear more about this eligibility and the privilege it carries. It strikes me as an agentive approach to supporting someone who might struggle with literacy.

The words "conflict" and "reading" loom large in this chapter for me. It is really fascinating how LaMay gets smarter about herself and her teaching as a result of this conflict. At the same time, her approach as a teacher of writing invites Abraham to get smarter about himself and his learning needs.

This is a common refrain from students who are challenged with life circumstances that present risk factors for schooling, I've learned. The relationships with adults in school can take on a primacy that directly impacts their decisions about which classes to engage in. "I'll do Mr __'s work but I'm not doing Mr _'s." What is so striking about this piece is LaMay's refusal to label Abraham or dismiss him on the basis of his behaviors.

The following is incredibly powerful! On a tangential note, I'm curious about how Bronwyn worked with Abraham (and other students) to get access to and use their writing in her book. No doubt Bronwyn likely details this elsewhere in her book, though some background for the purposes of our conversation would be grand.

How many educators take the time to learn about the academic dexterity of their students?

I was recently at a research conference and presented during a session on methodological complexities in studies of learning. Long story short, one of the presenters critiqued the often short timescales of many studies (often less than a few months, if that), and advocated years-long engagement with learners - despite many of the challenges that come with sustaining inquiry over such a period of time. Nonetheless, educators are uniquely positioned to conduct inquiry over longer timescales.

An inverse of this statement is fascinating to consider, too: Educators' pedagogical success is inextricable from their ability to develop and sustain positive relationships with learners.

Though specific to the context of Abraham's learning, this statement strongly resonates across other intellectual and professional contexts...

This is such an important sentence to me for a few reasons. First, it identifies that in this precarious relationship between teacher and student, the reading that is most vital is the ability to read each other's intentions. Second, in the relationship between high school English teacher and marginalized student with challenging life circumstances, LaMay asserts that they share a common skill in reading. That strikes me as a way of revaluing the literacy that Abraham brings. He's a relationship reader, engaging with only with the teachers he trusts.

Truth as creative.

This book is filled with powerful quotes, like this, from the students.

I was happy to see this chapter move into a focus on restorative practices since there are many resources to support this kind of practices in schools and community spaces. Maybe as part of this project we can gather some together to share?

Making connections here between the different chapters of this book that highlight the work of different students.

Okay. In tears at this point. Just to say.

Important statement here; restorative approach.

Powerful.

What are the implications ultimately of this approach? What is possible if we think more this way about our shared work in education and learning?

+1

Coming from a family where I too can see the devastating results of humiliation and exclusion ... and how totally unhelpful they are in resolving anything at all (they always make it worse, in fact) I so appreciate Bromwyn sharing alternative visions of what is possible.

This focus on sharing is important. Making and then sharing. Very much speaks to a constructionist framework as well as an essential practice I've learned through working with writing project teachers like Bronwyn.

The proceeding sentences here show an important framework around the work she is doing here.

Wow. Powerful image.

This sequence shows to me a teacher who is paying close attention to what students are creating. This distinction is subtle and also important.

This strikes me as a key intention in this work and therefore this chapter/description of the work with Abraham as case is a way to demonstrate one example of how a school/classroom can be a place of caring while also remain focused on learning.

Powerful statement here about administration working with the teachers on behalf of the students well-being.

Here we see Bromwyn being very self-aware in the ways that she is interacting with her student Abraham.

An essential focus here not just on the act of writing and revising but on well-being.

A description of what it means to revise narrative truth

provocative

I appreciate this definition of agency too. Was in a conversation recently where we were talking about collective agency and agency within community. I think this sense of purpose starts to pick up on that.

This is a beautiful and powerful definition that speaks to the power of the work the students and their teacher were doing here.

Thanks to Bronwyn LaMay for partnering with the Marginal Syllabus and joining us in an annotation conversation during the week of May 22nd. Click here for additional information about our annotathon in partnership with Educator Innovator, including a webinar on Tuesday, 5/31 at 7p ET.

And Joe later responded in a thoughtful post http://onewheeljoe.blogspot.com/2017/04/oops-and-ouch-reflecting-on-my-gendered.html

When you put multimedia in the margins, you make explicit some really interesting things, too, like the way ideas are intertextual, and the way images can capture a reader's response in nuanced ways that written text cannot. Your posts model for other readers that texts have multiple meanings which are shaped by a reader's context.

We see politicians these days getting shouted down in town hall meetings. Those public figures, too, have to contend with the context of their chosen interaction with an audience. Putting ideas out into the world carries risk.

The risks of posting online are greater for American Muslims, yet it seems as though there is a huge need for the Muslim community to combat popular perceptions and the popular media's portrayal of them.

I want to know more about this. Specifically, is it an imagined audience or an intended audience? We are all learning about what it means to have a kind of incidental audience online, where our posts might reach lurkers who are receptive to messages and different peer groups who are less receptive.

The data trail their activism leaves is so easily mined and spun. There is active surveillance and retroactive monitoring, where any footprint might be used against a young activist.

New media allows the formation of more nimble networks unencumbered by historical fragmentation or traditional, paternal hierarchies.

I take from this comment that youth voice is a necessary ingredient in conversations that hope to advance youth participation in politics.

This dynamic feels true for me, too. The political climate in my geographically local context influences the way I participate in online networks.

It seems to me that those interested in anti-racism or opposing the intimidation of American Muslims could seek to diversify their social and learning networks to ensure that the efforts of young American Muslims are heard and amplified.

I expect that being a target of hostility just comes with the territory for American Muslims. Though it has become harder for them since 9/11, they are accustomed to this kind of treatment.

I find myself wanting to fault our media for this in large part. Still, I have to accept that our commercial media responds to clicks, viewers and subscribers. Our cultural norms and our interests drive the demand. What does it say about us that our media focuses on Islamic terrorism at the same time it seeks to avoid labelling hate crimes committed by whites as terrorism at all, let alone Christian terrorism or white terrorism? How do we surface the hypocrisy in the interest of inclusion?

I can see how American Muslims might struggle to accept being American as part of their identities. It seems so important that all Americans be resolute in our commitment to religious freedom and acceptance in order to continually help Muslims integrate and thrive here.

Thanks to Educator Innovator for partnering with the Marginal Syllabus and hosting this week-long annotathon! We're most appreciative of Liana Gamber-Thompson at Educator Innovator and Christina Cantrill at the National Writing Project for guiding this collaborative effort forward. And, of course, a special thank you to Sangita Shrestova and her By Any Media Necessary co-authors for partnering with us for this annotathon and related webinar.

These lines in the poem offer an important contrast to the teacher's view above, where he aimed to clean students up and give them a better life. In this student's view, the teacher is also part of the learning community and shares in the challenging task, which is to "learn about each other so we can bring each other up."

This is a call for empathy on the part of the teacher, and for vulnerability. How can teachers establish a professional distance from "practices," so we can see their effects and impacts?

This is a distortion of the real task in front of the teacher which is, as Embid explained above "to get students engaged in science." This type of a distorted mission also opens the door to all kinds of dubious "best practices" which usually amount to strategies for controlling students, instead of relationship building.

Early career teachers in any school face an incredibly steep learning curve and what they say about students reveals the challenges they perceive. In their struggle to meet the myriad demands of the complex role, they label students "distracted," "unprepared," or "entitled." In an urban school, these challenges and the subsequent labelling exist in a multicultural context fraught with mistrust. The privileged teacher struggling as a learner develops coping strategies out of the tools that present themselves: referrals, suspensions, authority and rules.

It seems to me that the article brings to light a major problem in urban education is the separation between communities and schooling, so that any "anti intellectual vibe" is actually a result of being alienated by the educational system which does not value their lives and experiences as they are lived. From an education system which does NOT see students as actors in their own lives during schooling hours, but as vessels to be filled and given to by educators, thereby erasing their authenticity and autonomy.

What would this look like?

If you are familiar with Antigonish and Bonnie Stewart's #Antigonish2, I am imagining Trauma Informed Teaching would be a similar notion- bringing together communities for the communities- but what other forms of Trauma Informed Teaching would there be? How do teachers, students, and communities all reclaim a space, and can they do so together or are there tensions at work that make it impossible for all entities to reclaim something?

What can we do to help equip students navigate who they are and who they are expected to be? since this expectation is certainly not one that ends in schools and is something people must grapple with their entire lives.

How do we wrestle with this fundamental problem of education? Education is often seen as a necessity to improving one's life, in a variety of ways. How can we address improvement, growth, betterment without erasing value of their lives as they currently exist?

I think "giving" here is a real problem, the thought of some authority giving privileged, access, betterment rather than students building access and betterment--constructing the value of their lives... but even with that re-framing it seems a delicate balance to aim to improve without erasure. And if education's purpose isn't to improve quality of life, what is it?

This is such a powerful statement. How do we improve anything without unifying with the community? Why would we aim as educators to create new, distinct communities of practice that by their very nature create experiences of "us" vs "them" not just within the classroom(s) but within the very communities that are necessary to sustain learning and where we send students home to everyday? That's creating more barriers to education, not supporting learning

I feel like this notion is caught up in our obsessions for rigor in academia, and for STEM and "objective" science as disciplines. The dominant notion persists that we can somehow separate ourselves and our experiences from our work, and that somehow things don't count the same if we cannot do so. And it is a fundamentally dangerous way of thinking that is so disingenuous to how we actually experience the world

This piece is powerful in part because the student voices convey an unmistakeable perception that the teacher is unfair and, in the student's mind, incompetent. It is important that teachers consider these marginalized perspectives especially in circumstances like this, where the different viewpoints reveal a cultural gap.

This excerpt from Dr. Christopher Emdin's book For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education is the focal text for the Marginal Syllabus' annotathon in March. From March 27th through 31st, educators are invited to participate in an annotation conversation using the platform Hypothesis; additional information and directions for joining this conversation are here.

This is critical, transparency and modelling the process--stumbles and all.

This is ever so important.

Yes, we must destroy the notion of a dispassionate researcher. This is more relevant to the sciences which pretend as if there is such a thing, but the process of research is the same across fields, and passion and enjoyment of research drives our continuous participation

Since I own the book, I appreciate the attention to detail the authors have paid here. Teachers interested in stretching their practice or teachers new to the profession benefit from these models. Our conversation here in the margins based on the preface highlights possibilities and rationale. The chapters that follow help teachers feel prepared for leaps in practice they seek to make.

The purpose behind researching in school goes far beyond a single paper. I think it is essential to focus on skill development and the transferability of those skills.

And wires spark - "rewire" is very generative as a guiding metaphor - well done!

As essential as research is nowadays, modelling that the process is interest-driven and enjoyable is equally essential. In my classroom, I try to connect research with engaging debate opportunities, so that there is a payoff to note taking.

The importance of adaptation - rather than uniform adoption - is so important, and speaks to trust in educator agency and co-design, using artifacts from this text as objects that move across boundaries, that influence emergent practice, and that don't presume "one right way" of a lock-step formula.

I think these suggestions about how to extend and adapt provide important framing for how interested teachers might experiment in their local contexts. I'm reminded so often that teachers are interested in what works in their communities, schools and classrooms. Dawn's and Troy's experimentation should foster other experiments, and adaptations should abound.

The CL principles seem so important in a conversation about research because authentic research doesn't happen in isolation. The problems worth solving and the questions worth answering demand cross-content collaboration.

The collaborative demands of writing can sometimes be lost on students, whether the task is digital or good old fashioned paper and pencil. I blogged about this recently and tried to compare revision groups to the drills soccer players need to develop their skills.

What a term! Perhaps we should use this more as we describe the kind of emergent learning that occurs through open and collaborative web annotation. What is awakened through this process of open learning, and who are the awakeners (such as authors) that mediate the process?

To me, this stance is important for teachers because it communicates a positive sense of agency. The cultural changes with technology present challenges, to be sure, but they also open up possibilities for inquiry and discovery.

Another big thank you! As I've mentioned on Twitter, your course's "re/turn" to a previous Marginal Syllabus conversation (from October) is what Joe, Jeremy, and I hoped would happen over time - that educators would find conversations and texts that resonate with their interests and courses, and then join the text-based conversation via ongoing annotation. This turns the text-as-conversation into an open educational resource (OER), and - like you - we hope other educators and courses revisit these conversations to support their own learning.

I've had students say similar things about using Hypothesis to read together. I'd like to explore the relationship between open/collaborative web annotation and community-building... many questions to consider...

Awesome. Is it possible to connect with some of these posts and perspectives?

The preface to this book was featured as a Marginal Syllabus flash mob conversation on Wednesday, Feb 22 in partnership with Dawn Reed and Troy Hicks. Our thanks to Dawn and Troy for joining the Marginal Syllabus as author-discussants, and view our annotation conversation here.

This is so true when considering equity in education. Teachers need to connect with their students and understand how they experience the world both in and outside of school.

I reflect on this in light of behavior science and how it is a set of principles which becomes meaningful through application of social importance.

The goal of a quality educator should be to create a love of life long learning. This love of learning is experienced through living daily life.

Learning is a communal process. In today's age communities connect through the use of technology.

Learning takes place through interactions between individuals and individuals now interact across mediums of technology.

I believe the revolution that occurred during this time, the industrial revolution, parallels the technological revolution that has occurred more recently.

Challenging notions of "cheating." What does it mean to cheat? Is helping each other and learning together something we want to see?

In our networked age, knowledge is more mobile (note: I edited) than ever before and activity moving in all currents of society. What are the implications then for our institutions of learning?

Love it!

Barely made it to the end. Thank you all. Looking forward to continuing these conversations. xo

I want this to mean that civic occupation will bring students in contact with political realities. Can we co-investigate what it means that, "all politics is local" even as global events unfold before us on social media?

This sense of common needs is similar to "shared purpose" in connected learning.

I love the chapter on shared purpose in this book btw: Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom (http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/books/teaching_in_the_connected_learning_classroom)

YES! Why are they taken away? We can add to this list coding, programming, renewable energies, and maybe even gardening. These will be the sustainable skills of the future.

radical (see above :)

Entirely because they are able to make neural connections which solidify and anchor learning in long-term memory. Student attention spans and interest have skyrocketed in classrooms with coding, robotics, music production, invention and innovation to solve a genuine problem in our society or world. I remember not wanting to teach my students without providing these opportunities because I felt I was doing such a disservice to their futures. Why do we allow non-relevant learning to continue? When will students need derivatives in their lives? When will they need factoring on a daily basis? They shouldn't be forced to learn them unless they are part of the solution to the problems they are faced or challenged with.

looking up "radical"

Google says: relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.

The factory model of schooling persists but I believe that even the smallest moves toward authenticity can promote social learning and collaboration.

This is what happens when we treat students and teachers as statistical data and numbers. If they aren't allowed to think for themselves and create relevant learning which addresses real-world problems, there isn't genuine challenge and application. I see many classrooms where content is 5-10 years old and is instantly disengaging because it's out of date. Why aren't more classrooms talking about and exploring our current political situation, possible trips to mars, renewable energy, how technology advances impact our society? I'm sure consciousness would be much stronger in these environments and half-heartedness would nearly disappear.

implications of thinking of educative forces ... energies ... push/pull ...

love!

This can also be said of our flattening world and the 21st century skills it demands. Even as pedagogues might long for a simpler time, we have been witness to so many social and technological changes just in the 12 years I've been in education, that we should know that our schools have to also change.

Learning with purpose! Where has this gone? Why is there no longer a greater purpose in most K-12 classrooms? It may have never been there to begin with but I believe if there is a purpose tied to social necessities, greater world good, solving cultural/global problems, many students would be more engaged and motivated to learn as well as rising stars.

Dewey spoke about this long before now and we still adhere to it, why is this? True innovations doesn't come from manuals nor does critical thinking and great problem solvers. Do we really still need manuals with the web and open source?

So what are the impacts of a changing media ecology and globalization on education today?

When we employ approaches that draw upon design thinking, or personalized learning- just to name a few innovations- how can we better emphasize that these types of reform efforts or shifts in methods are not due to systemic failures but necessary because of cultural shifts and changes?

Now international; globalized.

What kind of society is being formed now? Conformist or free thinkers? It seems we are headed in the wrong direction if we don't offer choice to teachers and students about their learning and growth.

The one that comes to mind for me today is our rapidly changing media environment.

The same could be said about standardized testing. Not that it's not important but it can't be the emphasis nor the entire focus.

Love this sentence. What would we say today is a "matter of immediate and personal concern, even to the point of actual participation."?

I love thinking about this potential here as sites of learning.

Connected Learning report starts in a similar place. They write "We begin with an analysis of current economic, social, and technical trends that frame the educational challenges faced by many countries, especially in the Global North – including the contraction of economic opportunity, growing inequity in access to educational and economic opportunity, and the risks and opportunities of media engagement."

Key question here and also in ED677.

I have real concerns about this separation and its implications for learning and for democracy. I think it separates learners in our systems as well as thins the learning that is possible for all. It strikes me that it also gets more at the heart of what Dewey is writing about than examples that could otherwise be described as practical versus intellectual -- that whatever our pursuit we must integrate theory and practice.

Knowledge is no longer an immobile solid; it has been liquefied.

(Highlighting this quote because I like it! :)

I love the description of growing and forming together in contrast to something being re-formed or someone who re-forms.

The challenge.

Exciting what we can do with texts (in this case a lecture) like this that are shared and/or in the public domain.

Thank you to the folks at Marginal Syllabus, specially @remikalir and @onewheeljoe for their support for this discussion.

In 2012 I heard John Seely Brown give a keynote at the DML Conference where he said that "perhaps John Dewey (and Marie Montessori) were 75 years ahead of their time" when driving models of education that brought the learner into the flow of what they were learning. Maybe, he posits, "their intuition was right but their toolset was wrong."

I was so excited by this thought and have been wondering it ever since. So how might we do what JSB does in his speech and recast some of John Dewey's work here from 1907 in today's networked age?

JSB described his goal is to create an "arc of life learning that scales." I am wondering about equity in connected learning and teaching.

See: http://dmlcentral.net/the-global-one-room-schoolhouse-john-seely-brown/

Of course, today the telegraph is a personal device, however irrational our use of such mobile technologies - from the ill-informed tweet to the use of such devices for political surveillance.

Many critics and theorists today would suggest that this broader is also cultural and - given that we're reading and discussing a text that was first written 118 years ago - historical.

Given what's happening at the turn of 2017 with public education, and in both K-12 and higher education contexts, it's challenging to appreciate "the agency of the school," particularly if such agency is meant to embolden - and not "destroy" - our democracy.

Even though I know this text was published in 1899, the gendered language conventions of Dewey's text really stand out.

Here are some questions we are playing with via ED677 this week:

• What is important about the relationships and connections between schools and society?
• How might what Dewey wrote at the turn of the last century still be relevant today?
• What ways does Dewey reflect what John Seely Brown talked about? How does it relate so far to your readings about Connected Learning?
• What does this make you think about in terms of equity (or inequity) in learning today?

Join the Marginal Syllabus online this Wednesday, January 25th at 6p ET (3p PT) for an annotation flash mob-as-conversation with Christina Cantrill, Associate Director of National Programs for the National Writing Project. The Marginal Syllabus convenes conversations with educators about issues of equity in teaching, learning, and education. Throughout the 2016-17 school year, the Marginal Syllabus is fostering a participatory and open experiment in professional learning for all educators to join critical conversations about education and equity. On Wednesday, January 25th at 6p ET (3p PT) Christina and some of the participants in her ED677 course at Arcadia University will read and mark up this text, the first chapter from John Dewey's classic book The School and Society. Visit Marginal Syllabus resources for additional information, including directions for using the Hypothes.is platform.

This argument really falls flat. Asking schools to not generate data seems akin to the meme of the ill-informed senior who demands that government keep its damned hands of his Medicaid. Schools produce data the way students chew gum and affix that gum to the bottom of desks after the gum loses flavor. Certainly the accountability movement has fostered a love of spreadsheets and quantifiable data of all sorts that can be unhealthy. Still, schools generate data every time a teacher takes roll or grades papers. The records we create and steward are in service of a school improvement movement that I like to think predates high stakes testing. Some of my favorite people in education are researchers who get out from behind their keyboards, venture into public schools, and generate...you guessed it... data.

"...decolonizing is cool, except when I really think about it really hard..."

I love how the informality of this prose, this blog, belies the powerful press on a learning community's thinking.

I have a snarky joke I recycle over and over at work when I think things are going sideways, or when things feel unproductive by my high standards. As an example, our central office uses "reciprocal accountability agreements" to coordinate the work with schools. When the conversations around these "agreements" reveal gaps in agreement and the absence of "reciprocity," it tickles my funny bone to say, "That was a great meeting but I worry about what we're doing to the words 'reciprocal' and 'agreement.' English is an evolving language, you know, and those words might mean something entirely different when we are done with them."

-laugh track here-

This is my version of educator sarcasm. It helps no one and I think it is a bad habit on my part, but I persist.

I've also used this joke about "professional development" and "professional learning communities."

I'm aware that when I initiate equity conversations, educators from other walks of life might comment on my efforts with their own spin on my joke. What am I, a privileged white dude from suburban Denver, doing to important words like equity, or diversity?

-laugh track here-

This call for a conversation about terms is vital because I think we all- snarkiness aside- have a role to play in how these words inform and shape the learning of educational tinkerers. All jokes aside, we have a chance to leave these words better than we found them.

Fun to think of these emerging ideas as drafts. How many mental drafts before an idea flows onto a blog post?

For example, we might simply ask that each participant refrain from using hashtags as a final thought because that is a form of sarcasm or punchline that can be misconstrued or shut down honest debate or agreeable disagreement.

We could ask respondents to reply to any comment that they read twice because of tone to use "ouch" as a tag or a textual response. The offending respondent could respond with "oops" in order to preserve good will in an exchange of ideas.

Finally, the first part of a flash mob might occur here, in the page notes, where norms could be quickly negotiated and agreed upon with a form of protocol.

This reminds me of Paul Allison's LRNG playlist in which youth have to choose keywords associated with their own inquiry questions.

As industries struggle to adapt to our flattening world, companies who have been throwing advertising dollars at anyone who will promise them clicks and site views are inadvertently funding disinformation. And our president-elect is trying to undermine the credibility of the CIA and NSA.

This nomination makes sense if you want to privatize education and further marginalize special needs students and language learners.

Facts matter. Data matters. Strange how we never hear this type of data in public schools even though our school leaders are usually keenly aware of community satisfaction or lack thereof.

This nomination makes sense if your goal is to partner with Russia to exploit all natural resources.

How quickly black youth forgive us for doing school to them, even when we're discriminating against them.

...as Holden and I are doing at marginalsyllab.us/conversations

This should read: "11th grade English teacher and instructional coach at Rangeview High School"

Fiscally conservative-minded school leaders in my district point at spending practices and budgeting as the reason for the $31 million hole.

This sentence resonates with me and should lead to a syllabus that is required reading for anyone in ed tech in public schools.

Yes! Participate! Protest! Fight for someone, anyone less fortunate than you- they're everywhere- as an antidote to frustration and despair.

They have turned against both in this case.

I'm interested in responses to this. I agree about the desire for unfettered exercise of power and capital. Is it fair to say capitalism resists regulation? Does capitalism resist real movements in the public interest?

This resonates with me. Who isn't establishment? Who is marginal in this framing?

Powerful. Also, because we weaken the public institutions that democratize opportunity, we continue to live in a profoundly unfair society.

This speaks to complacency of ed tech enthusiasts who trumpet the affordances of new tools and new features on old tools without recognizing the web as contested space where commercial interests reign.

Wow .. well-stated and a constant worry on my mind when I teach my young students. It's more important than ever to teach our students how to keep a clear mind and a clear eye on what is being done with their data, and why. Nothing is free. Nothing. Unless you build it and host it yourself. And who does that?