Broadening my educational perspective and getting outside my tunnel vision.

Girl escaping to a wider view

My challenge this week was to diversify my media consumption. Why, you ask? Well, we know that we all have a confirmation bias and that over time, what we see in our feeds becomes narrowed. "Filter bubbles", as Eli Parise (2011) called them, limit what we see outside our common perspective that we are clicking on. Even worse, we don't even see what is out there.

Completing this challenge was hard! Actively looking for educational news and perspectives outside our own takes time and a concerted effort in what felt more like overcoming an event horizon than just a filter bubble. I realized two things: I have relied on colleagues, peers and friends to help me find new sources in the past, which included some diversity but not nearly enough and if I was finding it difficult, how do my students feel about this? Here is a blogpost/podcast that I found challenged my thinking.

So if, as Gee (2013) proposes, "diversity is honored because diverse people and viewpoints serve the same purpose as variation does in evolution," then we need to help students navigate the digital world and their bubbles. Schools, including mine, have begun banning mobile phones from schhols. Is this the right move? How will students know of and navigate their "filter bubble"? My opinion has morphed a little, maybe we need to be taking a closer look at these bans and work on building supports for students. Something that I will be spending more time exploring now.

TED. (2011, February). Beware online "filter bubbles" | Eli Pariser. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles/transcript

Gee, J. P. (2013). The anti-education era: Creating smarter students through digital learning. Palgrave/MacMillan.

Image created using wiz AI

Gonzalez, J. (2017, January 29). 7 Systems that help outside the box learners. Cult of Pedagogy. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/underperforming-students/