In Community

Learning in community

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#WriteAcrossAmerica

Petrified Forest.

Fascinating to me as a kid; I was attracted to the colors and the idea of wood becoming stone. But to read about it wasn’t satisfying, to be told about it was just confusing. I wanted to understand how a forest (which from my east coast perspective was a stand of mostly green trees in a dense area filled with damp smells and sounds of critters running around) could really be stone and not wood. And why they were so scared, so petrified. If I had ever been asked to draw what I was imagining it would have been much more like the Wizard of Oz to me.

Watching a video of it now is so interesting in the way it both conjures those childhood memories and also lays waste to them. Rolling hills of colored sad, chunks of wood/stone lying this way and that. Not the magic forest I imagined at all; yet something else altogether fascinating in a different way. I turned the music off to imagine what it must sound like out there or to at least get closer to it (the music was unhelpful/distracting); would love to get closer to how hot it must be, to the reflections in the sand along the way, the crunch under my foot, to the sound of the wind and the openness. Are there any green plants at all? Any birds or animals skittering about? I could imagine being a little nervous there.

Inspired by colleagues at the Central Arizona Writing Project.

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Teaching Writing in the time of COVID-19

Written for a class I am teaching called Teaching Writing Online at Johns Hopkins; posted originally in class Blackboard blog (which isn’t really a blog at all) in response to the prompt “Teaching writing in the time of COVID-19.”

Weeks before COVID officially hit the States, it was in the news in China. My partner had been to Beijing for work in late November/early December when things were still fairly normal. But a few weeks after his return, the city of Wuhan had shut down. He got in touch with his colleagues via WeChat to find out how they were and what was going on. Within a week or so they were also homebound, work and school closed down throughout Beijing and Shanghai.

“Millions of children are now going to school online” he said to me one morning. This is when I really started to take note. Millions of kids out of school, stuck at home, online learning. Wow. And uh oh.

It would be another few weeks before it was here.

I live in Philadelphia. In Philly, during the previous months, a few schools had actually already closed due to crumbling asbestos found in public areas of the school, including the gyms and cafeterias. Parents were protesting and some were already keeping kids home. It was just a handful of schools but, having gone to these schools myself as a kid and visiting them as an adult from time to time, I know that this is a much bigger problem than just a few schools, especially in buildings of a certain era. It was not clear what would happen, how the district would respond to the growing public knowledge and concern about this issue, what were plans for addressing it at speed or scale, and what funds could be accessed to repair these old buildings and crumbling facilities.

But COVID changed that, quickly. School closed down (still with active asbestos) and thousands of children were sent home. And the disparities of our city that we know about - the poverty and the underfunding of our public schools -- opened like crackling and veining crevasses throughout the streets and neighborhoods of our city.

What became clear immediately is that many Philadelphian children needed lunch since food insecurity is high and school was the one place where they could be guaranteed a meal each day; getting food to them and also providing a place for them to be if needed was the first priority. Then a second piece was to make sure that kids had access to technology they could use to stay connected to their teachers and peers and Chromebooks were distributed to families (sometimes at real risk to those who had to hand them out). Challenges continued and despite being the home of Comcast, the lack of Internet access and broadband in homes throughout the city is determined by income. The district website even, at one point, suggested finding “parking lot wifi” after failing to figure out how to get community-wide access. Long time educational reporters Dale Mezzacappa and Bill Hangley Jr. write in the Public School Notebook that “Wealthier districts have a "10-year head start" on devices, online access, and virtual curriculum.” compared to Philadelphia.

As the school year winds down, planning continues and CDC guidelines (the full one not the White House one) are being used to plan what to do come the Fall. Hangley writes that nothing is clear except that “the coronavirus hits low-income and minority communities hardest, and students like Philadelphia’s are at the greatest risk.”

The disparities that we have know for years now are on full display again after the murder of George Floyd and the unequal impact of COVID on black and brown communities throughout the United States. And, as challenging as it is, I also believe that much of what has been deemed “impossible” has proved to actually be possible. We can rethink the way we function and close down if we need to to keep safe. We can uprise if we need to to protest systemic inequities. So in these possibilities I also see opportunities for us as teachers and learners. It is an opportunity to really look squarely at what is unjust and inequitable. It is also an opportunity to re-think, re-imagine, re-prioritize what is most important in education and schooling (and many are; will work to put a list together).

State testing was dropped for this school year, for example. What could school be if it were less focused on testing and competition of children to show “merit” for higher education and instead asked kids to do real work in the world, supported by teachers and mentors and communities? What if kids were asked to participate meaningfully in their communities at school and at home and did research on topics of deep interests and importance to them, like food insecurity, and were asked to use their voice to share what they learned and advocate for what is needed? What if they had an opportunity to do work that contributed -- how much would we all gain? How fast could we come up with solutions and better understandings of pandemics like COVID if we had all these young minds considering the possibilities alongside us adults? What if kids were engaged in learning by doing - and writing - in ways that build democracy and dismantle racist systems instead of teaching kids how to follow rules and act in compliance to a set of demands created by adults without their consultation?

What would writing, learning and teaching look like then?

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Sharing ED677 theory and design

From 2015 through to 2019 I taught a spring course at Arcadia University called Seeking Equity in Connected Learning and Teaching. It was a graduate level class offered by the School of Education and part of the Connected Learning Certificate available at the time. 

In this video I share some of the theory behind this course and its related course design. I created this mostly for participants in another course I am about to launch, Teaching Writing Online, at Johns Hopkins; but I also thought it might be more generally of interest. Much of the design is ultimately influenced by the National Writing Project’s CLMOOC work (2013-15) and Domain of One’s Own and available to me via #connectedcourses work and Reclaim Hosting.

In these next two videos I share two activities within ED677 - a shared curation process called Find 5 Friday (#f5f) and an online consultancy process using Flipgrid and a Consultancy Protocol.

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Spiral Q Peoplehood and Participatory Puppet Performance, Part 3

(Jump here for Part 1 and Part 2)

How it is created and why that matters

In Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, Henry Jenkins writes that “[p]articipatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from individual expression to community involvement.” Peoplehood, as an event that seeks to involve a community/ies expression of itself/themselves through parades and pageantry, is an interesting context to explore participatory culture and its potential. The lens of participatory culture is also useful to look at Peoplehood in order to understand its creation process and why it matters.

A participatory culture was originally defined by Jenkins as one:

With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement

With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others

With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices

Where members believe that their contributions matter

Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at least they care what other people think about what they have created)

Researching participatory cultures over time - through fan communities and activists movements primarily - Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova have been interrogating the possibilities and challenges through the Civic Imagination Project where “imagining community ... is actively generating new cultural symbols to describe their relationship with each other. Imagination is seen not as a product or a possession ... Rather, we talk about imagining as a process.”

Supporting imagining as a process and creating new signs and symbols through sharing stories are core ideas of the Spiral Q Puppet Theater. Through low-stakes and accessible object creation and performance, participants can make and remix their everyday reality alongside others. In its mission statement, Spiral Q states that “We imagine a city whose streets reflect the full spectrum of its residents’ creativity. We see a responsive and engaged society that rallies consistently to overcome the challenges of discrimination and oppression. We envision a world of abundance that mobilizes its resources to nurture shared vitality.” When sharing the power of the 2019 Peoplehood Parade and Pageant, co-director Jennifer Turnbull describes the process that surfaced the story and related puppets:

This year we partnered with three local grassroots activist groups .... Through pageantry we were able to show the through line connection they all had to health, housing, self determination and freedom.

In working to design for shared power and participation, Tracy Broyles - the Director of the Q after Matty - describes the ways that affirmation, imagination and practice are so important. Everyone has a role to play, she says, and that “any moment someone enters the process is the right moment” (TEDx Philly, 2012). Affirming participation, and providing many points of entry, are key ways that the Q attempts to build Peoplehood and, according to Jenkins, are defining features of participatory practice.

Another central element of participation, according to Jenkins, “is that we participate in something larger than ourselves, however we want to imagine what it is we are participating within” (Jenkins, Confessions of a Aca-Fan post, 2019). Eli Nixon, in 2003, describes themselves and this work as part of a larger whole:

I'm just a small column of flesh and bones. I can build something that's larger than me... I really get a kick out of it as a way to tell stories and to make humans bigger than they are or to examine different parts of everyday people's lives in a way that I think is more interesting than real life. It's an awesome way to interpret who we are.

Looking at the outcomes of a participatory process is another way to assess its viability (Jenkins, Confessions of a Aca-Fan post, 2019). Tracy describes the ways that people literally “spiral out of q.” 

What we see is this a place where people test these things and then go out into the world. Okay so now [they] might not use puppets and art and all these things ... but they have got this place, a sense of direction, a sense of safety, a sense of community has formed around that individual or that community and then that cause or idea ... can really gain some traction and go off and become a movement that’s working on a policy level or at a community organizing level or simply building beautiful things.

In working to refine a definition of participatory culture in a fractured media environment, Jenkins and his colleagues bring a critical focus to the mix, ie. “Which members of a dis-privileged group find their power position strengthened through the participatory process?” A complex question but also critical for the Q. In one example, we find an interview 2003 with Jennifer Hilinski, a therapist at Girard Medical Center, who was asked about her experience working with a group of men in recovery in collaborating with the Q on Peoplehood the previous fall. 

"The common story was about recovery and getting back into the real world as contributing members of society.” Jennifer said, “And they took a theme of going from hell -- which was the streets and using -- to this kind of angelic transformation and re-entering the world and the streets but not as street person” (2003). Since that time a group from Girard Medical Center participate in Peoplehood every year, leading with their giant backpack puppets of transformation.

Conclusion

In the 2008 Peoplehood newsletter, the process of building Peoplehood is described by Tracy as “flawed, just like our democracy.” And we are reminded by the Civic Imagination Project that “If stories can inspire and empower social change, stories can also shatter communities, feeding our fears and suspicions, re-enforcing stereotypes in particularly vivid ways.” Jenkins and his colleague also tell us that the fostering of participation is vital while fragile and requiring care:

participation could also be finished. It could come to an end. Democracy, as a political and social practice, is not a given, but could cease to exist. ... This is why participation and democracy need to be actively protected, and not just silently appreciated.

We know that object performance, storytelling, or even parades and pageants which historically have also been used in fascist and authoritarian settings, do not create democratic space themselves. Instead democracy, through an ethos of participation, needs to be fostered.

Peoplehood, as a creative space for democratic storytelling and cultural remixing, is one such opportunity to intentionally test and tinker with the possibilities and challenges of participatory practice. It allows individuals and groups to come together, figure out what is needed when they work together, and then bring it into being through object creation, puppet performance and joyful demonstration.

In 2003, Matty Hart described Peoplehood’s parade and pageant as "secular cultural ritual[s] ... that are actually really kind of sacred and really really old.” These rituals, when built in shared and participatory ways, situate puppets and objects as powerful vehicles for fostering civic imagination through the creation of new cultural symbols and understandings. 

As Jennifer writes about the Q in a Nonprofit Executive Leadership Institute newsletter: “we create space for the unknown. You just don't know what you don't know.”

Want to read more about Peoplehood and Spiral Q? Check out Part 1: What is Peoplehood? and Part 2: Elements of Performance.

Images courtesy of spiralq.org and my personal collection.

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Spiral Q Peoplehood and Participatory Puppet Performance, Part 2

(Jump here for Part 1 and Part 3)

Elements of the Performance 

The Peoplehood Parade and Pageant has shifted and morphed overtime to respond to its community and context and yet, both the parade and pageant retain many of the elements of their performance from the beginning. 

Since 2000, the Peoplehood Parade has kicked off at the Paul Robeson House. The house is part of the West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and it provides access to the arts, supports local artists, and advocates for arts to promote social change and economic development. The website describes their work and mission in relation to Paul Robeson’s legacy: 

In a red brick house – not unlike many others on the 4900 block of Walnut Street in Philadelphia – Paul Robeson came to live out his final years with his big sister Marian Forsythe. The unassuming rowhouse was a haven for a man who had used his voice in song and speeches to advocate for the rights of oppressed people. 

Every Peoplehood starts on the block between Walnut and Sansom and Fran Aulston, of the Robeson House (and now her successor), welcome all to the neighborhood and give a blessing for the parade’s journey. From there the parade moves south, wending its way through residential streets. A few people carry a banner and a couple of flags to lead the parade, followed by different groups carrying or wearing puppets, costumes, flags, and their own banners. The giant puppets are spread out among the paraders with arms outstretched. The West Powelton Stepper Drum Squad, and sometimes its dancers, have been partners for many years and hold the front of the parade, while other musical groups - often a handmade instrument brigade - take up the rear. 

The parade ends at Clark Park, a municipal park created in the late 1800s whose prominent feature is a former pond now known as the “bowl”. Peoplehood enters this park from its most southwest corner. Everyone is invited to cross the bowl and sit around its edge while organizers actively recruit people who might be interested in participating. Open roles usually include at least birds, houses, and flags; the birds and houses are made to fit smaller people so that children can be involved. 

The pageant itself is performed in the bowl for, and partially by, the audience. Over the years the details of the story have shifted but the arc of the story remains essentially the same -- there are people, animals, houses, etc. co-existing in relatively peaceful (but often separate) ways when some sort of force comes in and does damage to them and brings destruction and pain in its wake. This force is then only confronted by a counterforce of the people, animals, houses, etc. organizing themselves and using their collective power to reverse the pain and destruction. Once the power of the collective is recognized and engaged, the destructive force is reduced and then (often) included in the celebration of transformation and community at the end which is highlighted by music, dance and an invitation for everyone to join in. 

Although the story is similar, the puppets used and the story details are specified by whomever creates the pageant; some puppets from previous years are used in remixed roles and others are built new. Topics of the day bring a focus to the story; these have included school closures, the housing market crash, gun violence in the community. Today, the pageants continue to reflect the social and political happenings in the community and wider world, much in the way that puppet and object performance has historically taken up this role (Bell). For example, In 2017 the parade was organized around the theme of Healing Our Roots both as a tribute to the late Fran Aulston, who had died earlier that year, as well as the emergent #blacklivesmatter movement. 2018 brought a focus on Trans Lives Matter and in 2019 three activists groups - ACT-UP, Philly Thrive (advocating for clean-up of Philly’s old oil refineries), and the Shut Down Berks Coalition (advocating for the release of families in a Pennsylvania migrant detention center) - were engaged through an Arts in Action Pipeline process and invited to imagine the pageant together. 

The pageant is set up to feature its surrounding landscape, ie. the urban park surrounded by rowhouses, trolley cars, playgrounds, a health center and a community garden. The opening of the pageant is always a loosely choreographed event involving flags although since 2017 the pageant begins with a participatory Healing & Reconciliation Dance meant to embody the historic violence against people of color in the United States (spiralq.org). 

The puppet objects form the details of the narrative as they move and dance and interact with one another - a kind of cultural remix. Puppets have included creative tools like giant paintbrushes and hammers, destructive forces like bulldozers, oil rigs and eviction notices, transformational puppets such as floating ancestors, butterflies and suns, fantastical creatures that enter on rocketships and winged horses, memorial objects such as ankhs and vessels, as well as a range of janis figures that represent the related sides of struggle and addiction to acceptance and transformation. 

The giants puppets are usually created using simple backpack structures and require three people to carry. Giant heads and heads are created for these puppets, and/or fit onto someone’s head and/or are created to be carried, bunraku style. Headdresses and feather backpacks create simple birds, cardboard houses are worn around the torso, flags of different sizes and colors are available for waving and signaling. Other elements have included conestoria and giant crankies, painted umbrellas, cardboard clothing, and lots of painted “flat” puppets carried individually or collectively. Spoken and written text, sounds and music also play key roles in most performances. Musical partners have included various local musicians, the US Postal Service Choir, and parade partners. As Matty describes: 

It’s messy and it should be. And I think that those are the critical moments in how we’re trying to redefine the use of public space that allows us to understand that it is ours.

Want to read more about Peoplehood and Spiral Q? Check out Part 1: What is Peoplehood and a Part 3: How it is created and why that matters.

Images courtesy of spiralq.org and my personal collection.

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Spiral Q Peoplehood and Participatory Puppet Performance, Part I

Walking in downtown Philadelphia in the late 1990s, we came upon Matty. Or, really what we saw was a giant black and red fist made of cardboard holding itself straight up in the air. My friend recognized the activist under the fist as Matty Hart and we stopped to admire the giant puppet and to say hello. I was immediately inspired and set out to find out more about Matty and what he was building. 

During the day I worked with an educational non-profit, operating from a small office connected to teachers online, and I soon found myself spending late afternoons in a walk-up apartment at 13th and Sansom streets among activists and artists, making cardboard and paper mache puppets. A couple weeks later, I jumped into a parade in Old City as one of the hands of the giant puppet that took the lead; this was my first parade with the newly formed Spiral Q Puppet Theater. 

Matty apparently thought I was a librarian. Or a Quaker. Admittedly I was a bit quiet and shy among the activists, and I wasn’t directly connected to any of their work. Instead, I was drawn to the making - the paper mache, the used jars of house paint, the fabric rolls, the giant puppets made from all of these materials, and the spectacle these objects created on the street. It reminded me of the organizing work I was doing with educators on then nascent Internet, although here it was in full-out analog and recycled glory. Over time I would become a regular volunteer in the Spiral Q Peoplehood Parade and Pageant, a member of the Board of Directors, and then ultimately its co-Chair and Chair, a position I would be in for several years. 

What is Peoplehood? 

One story of Peoplehood is about how a community was activated immediately following a show of police-force and repression that impacted many in the city of Philadelphia in the year 2000. Another story is the power of the art of ancient object performance and puppet theater and how, when used wisely, it can feed a fundamental need for connected community. 

John Bell’s book on American Puppet Modernism: Essays on the Material World in Performance ends with his thoughts about “the communicative powers of traditional materials performed live in public spaces” and picks up on both of these stories (Bell 229). First referring to puppet spectacles created for the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, he then turns to the unjust arrest of dozens of puppeteers and the destruction of hundreds of puppets the following year: “The power of the ancient art of puppet theater was demonstrated in a different way ... during the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia” (Bell 230). 

Peoplehood is a “giant puppet spectacle” envisioned as an event that brings people and organizations involved in Spiral Q programs together to celebrate across communities. Beth Pulcinella, then a “Q” teaching artist, reflects back on that period of time and the naming of “Peoplehood” in the 2008 Spiral Q Peoplehood Newsletter: 

That fall, after the Republican National Convention when many of us had gotten arrested, we were tired. Puppets had been built and destroyed … Fall had arrived and with fall came Spiral Q’s annual culminating giant puppet parade and pageant. It was the parade of all parades. 

She then describes the evening that it came together. After a meeting to decide on a name and vision that had ended without a satisfying conclusion, Beth recounts sitting down to peruse the dictionary trying to find new words to help describe what she and others were envisioning. 

… I can taste that night and the feeling of complete certainty when it leapt at me from the dictionary pages: “Peoplehood, n 1. The quality or state of constituting a people 2. The awareness of the underlying unit that makes the individual part of a people.” 

Based on the poster created for that year, the full title became Peoplehood: An All-City Parade & Pageant. It reads “Spiral Q’s participatory giant puppet and costume parade that will loop through West Philadelphia to Clark Park, followed by ‘The Pageant of Our Neighbors’.” The poster details the times and addresses of these two events - the parade and the pageant - and then announces “Studios open to the public to build giant puppets will be held each Saturday and Sunday in October at Spiral Q Puppet Theater, 1307 Sansom Street, from 11-5.” 

This call to build a participatory giant puppet and costume parade went out to the general public in addition to the Q’s many partners. This act of making invitations and engaging the community in shared practices underscores the participatory ethos of Spiral Q’s work and deeply informs the now annual Peoplehood Parade and Pageant. 

Peoplehood’s Influences 

ACT-UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, was an original partner and influence of the Q from the very beginning. In exploring the power of live and material performance, Bell describes the work of ACT-UP starting in the late 1980s. He writes that “ACT-UP created brilliant actions marked by audacity, humor and good design sense, and their choice of materials was centrally important to their work” (Bell 227). He then describes their use of objects, including visual language and even the bodies of those who had died of AIDS, and the ways they were able to leverage mass media to draw attention to the urgency of the crisis and to force change. Ezra Berkeley Nepon in their book Dazzle Camouflage: Spectacular Theatrical Strategies for Resistance and Resilience quotes ACT-UP activist Jon Greenberg in describing the power of the group’s performance methods as “theater in the world” using all the conventions of formal theater on the streets and in public spaces instead (Nepon 32). 

In an interview from the Philadelphia Gay News in May 1996, Matty tells this story of discovering puppetry when he met the Radical Fairies at a march with ACT-UP. 

I went to New York City for Stonewall 25 ... I was really feeling very disenfranchised … About eight blocks into the march I just sat down. Was exhausted, and the sun was really strong. 

And then I hear all this really amazing drumming, and screaming, and bells … all of the sudden I spot these three, huge fairy puppets that were 6 feet in the air above people’s heads, with moving heads, and moving eyes, and long arms that were holding people and hugging them. They were fantastic. 

Like ACT-UP, Matty conceived of Spiral Q as a place where the tools and techniques of theater could be used by “all these people who aren’t invited into traditional theater at all.” And like the fairies he saw, he chose to use puppets. “Puppets can be this totally transcendent thing” Matty says. “For on instant, we can share some elemental delight.” When asked about the name, Matty describes the “Spiral” as an old symbol of magic, of energy and the “Q” is the queer, the other (Philadelphia Gay News 1996, Works In Progress 2002). 

Giant puppetry, and the art of Bread and Puppet, also have been a strong influence on the Q. Matty, as well as several teaching artists, spent time with Bread and Puppet in Vermont. The use of available, cheap, reused and recycled materials is a core piece of all the work at Spiral Q as is the notion of puppeting via parading in public space, and reclaiming public space through the accessible form of parade (Brother Bread, Sister Puppet). Peoplehood’s pageant is reminiscent of the Bread and Puppet pageant in key ways: it is situated in a natural amphitheater (albeit the smaller urban version); the giant puppets, as well as the collective elements, require groups of people; and, the seating of the audience and the staging bring a focus to the story as well as to the landscape of the story. 

Although called a “puppet theater” the Q has rarely produced its own shows in any traditional sense. Often compared to other public spectacles inspired by Bread and Puppet, like Heart of the Beast May Day Parade and Pageant in Minnesota, the Q’s commitment to supporting the community to use puppetry and object performance to build their own stories makes it fairly unique. A closer comparison in the theater work is Ramshackle Enterprises founded by Eli Nixon, a former Q teaching artist. On their website Eli describes what they are trying to do: 

I’m trying to find out how to teach, perform and collaborate in ways that challenge ordinary roles and oppressive power dynamics, that encourage creative resistance to the phobias and ism-hood of our culture and explore the vast potential of our strange and glorious species [and] ... trying to see what termites, pelicans and lichen have to teach us. 

The Cattywampus Puppet Council in Knoxville, Tennessee and the Appalachian Puppet Pageant is another example. Their mission is similar: to utilize community-based theatre, parades, and participatory workshops to build power and creativity in community and fuel justice and liberation. Both pageants, Peoplehood and the Appalachian Puppet Pageant, are described as “people-powered” in their performance and in their creation. 

Over time, the influences on Peoplehood will continue to grow, change and evolve due to the participatory nature of its work. For example, in the mid 2000s, a process of speaking and listening to each other called “Story Circle” was adapted from the teachings and traditions of John O’Neil and Junebug Productions.

Want to read more about Peoplehood and Spiral Q? Here is Part 2: Elements of performance and Part 3: How it is created and why that matters.

Images from my personal collection.

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Puppetry as a mid-career move?

In fall 2019 I will be officially enrolled in the UConn Puppetry Arts Online Certificate program. Having already completed one of the four classes, I had to make it official to keep going; here’s my personal statement on why in case you are wondering. 

Personal Statement

Throughout my 20s I really thought—in fact I believed—that we could change the world with puppetry. I was an enthusiastic volunteer with the Spiral Q puppet theater (spiralq.org)—I participated in an annual community-built parade and pageant called Peoplehood, co-designed a workshop at a local high school to engage African-American youth in a reading and reinterpretation of Dubois’s The Star of Ethiopia, organized friendraising house parties as a freshling board member, etc. My theory of action was this: we come together in community to creatively build the world we want to see and then, through participatory performance, we manifest that world into literal (albeit cardboard) being.

Now, much closer to my 50s and watching as the world creeps closer and closer to tyranny, I am a bit less ... sure. But I remain committed to the idea that change—both big and small—does happen in creative community and that puppetry can be a powerful tool in that work. What I’ve learned over time, both at the Q as well as an educator, is that the creation and manipulation of physically engaged objects in creative play —whether analog or digital—can surface that which is otherwise hard to reach and access. It is through embodiment that we start to process our experiences in larger systems and gain a sense of agency and critical civic empathy (Mirra, 2018). Therefore I believe that puppetry offers a unique mode for the sharing of stories across diversity and difference that is so essential for our world today.

Beyond my work with Spiral Q, puppetry specifically has popped up in my work at the National Writing Project—an educator network focus on the teaching of writing (nwp.org)—in ways that initially surprised me. First in the context of working on Connected Learning (Ito et al, 2013) and a systems-thinking curriculum project (Peppler, et al. 2014), it has more recently surfaced again in the context of consulting on the development of a modular robotic toy and a related project engaging teachers in using AR tools to support youth imagination and career pathways. In 2017 I presented some of my thoughts about puppetry and Connected Learning as an Ignite Talk at the Connected Learning Summit at the University of California Irvine (Cantrill, 2017). Because of this work, and my fundamental belief in the power of the puppet, I have started to think more deeply about the implications of this kind of object-based manipulation and performance on learning and teaching.

My interest in studying at UConn was solidified at the The Living Objects: African American Puppetry symposium hosted by the Ballard Institute this past February. Decolonizing the stories we tell, how and why we tell them, is key to healing what is so damaged. I feel that my work at the Q as well as the NWP are key parts of those decolonization efforts and I wish to continue that work through the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program.

I would be greatly honored to have the opportunity to learn alongside the artists, scholars and philosophers associated with the Ballard Institute and the UConn School of Puppetry Arts.

Thank you for your consideration.

Cantrill, C. (2017). Desa, Kala, Patra. Ignite Talk: Digital Media and Learning, October 2017. Accessed June 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXnqSBOsoC8

Mirra, N. (2018). Educating for empathy: Literacy learning and civic engagement. Teachers College Press.

Ito, M., Gutiérrez, K., Livingstone, S., Penuel, B., Rhodes, J., Salen, K., ... & Watkins, S. C. (2013). Connected learning: An agenda for research and design. Digital Media and Learning.

Peppler, K., Tekinbas, K. S., Gresalfi, M., Santo, R., & Cantrill, C. (2014). Short Circuits: Crafting e-Puppets with DIY Electronics. MIT Press.

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Ignite from DML 2017

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Beirut

We arrived late in the evening to Beirut and pulled into the driveway of the Smallville Hotel on Damascus road. “The road to Damascus” I thought to myself; two hours away by car I was told when I asked. Syria, the neighboring country embroiled now in devastating civil war. Yes, here I am. In the Middle East.

I immediately flashback to July 4th, 1987, the summer when I first went overseas to Germany. Because it was the US holiday, we went by car to a branch office of the US Embassy near Bonn where they were planning to host a barbecue and fireworks. Upon arriving at the gate, security guards with automatic rifles approached the car and asked for our IDs. Large concrete blocks and metal barricades surrounded the guard stand, and now the car, and extended all the way over to and around the buildings beyond. At 17 I hadn’t quite seen anything like this before (although I would soon see more very soon in Berlin). I remember asking what was happening and I was told that a US embassy had been bombed in Beirut, Lebanon.

It is now 30 years later and I have just returned from a trip -- a vacation of sorts -- to Beirut, the place that so captured my imagination that summer. Traveling there with my partner Jack who was invited to be a guest of International Refugee Assistance Program (IRAP), an organization his company supports, I ended up spending a remarkable week becoming familiar with IRAPs work while getting a bit of a feel for the city and its history and learning more about the war now raging less than two hours away.

Beirut today is a bustling vibrant city of neighborhoods and many Lebanese told us they were happy to be at peace and felt safe; they wanted the highlights of their city to be appreciated and shared. Despite struggling with the struggles around them, the neighborhoods were filled with young men and women spending time together often with drinks and also shisha pipes. Political murals adorned many walls throughout the city, and modern buildings sat next to pocketed shells of buildings; several in fact still face each other across intersections, making very vivid current politics and the reality of a 15-year civil war.

Beirut is a diverse and multiethnic place, and is known to be one of the most open and free cities in the Middle East even though we were told that it can shift from block to block. The colonial heritage is alive with the French language, along with English and Arabic, being still taught in schools.  The older architecture -- and several buildings in their full glory still exist -- are a mix of Lebanese and French style, along with Turkish or Ottoman. The food was a similar mix along with Armenian. Zatar on flatbread with vegetables or Laban and Turkish coffee made for delicious morning meal, while hummus, pita, mezze were available everywhere throughout the day. Beaches sit along the eastern Mediterranean waterfront and, quite amazingly, west of the city rises rapidly into snow capped mountains.

As supporters of IRAP,  we were invited to participate in what was the real focus of this trip -- ie. training mostly US-based law students on the refugee situation in the region and having them do an initial intake interview with Syrian refugees. The goal in the Beirut office was to engage this group of students and, us as supporters, to help IRAP prioritize its resources around advocacy and resettlement efforts; efforts whose pipeline continues to get smaller and smaller as the need continues to expand. Although no longer officially counted by the Lebanese government, most people seem to believe that there over 1.5 million Syrians now in Lebanon not able to obtain legal residency or related social services.

We were told many times that Syrians and Lebanese have a long history, at war and also at peace. After the civil war and Syrian occupation, Syrians traveled freely to Lebanon and work there. When the Syrian war broke out, people either crossed the border or were already in Lebanon and simply did not go back. So although there are tented settlements of Syrian refugees in Lebanon (mostly outside the city and close to the Syrian border), there are also many living in crowded houses, apartments and with extended family doing underground work in the cities.

Jack has written about this trip and about how protected we were from the actual situation; it’s true. Throughout the trip we remained in the city, visited NGOs, and the families we were interviewing came to us at the IRAP office. This was intentional of course; not only were there real security concerns but also our job was not to be there to get involved at that level. Instead they needed us to do some work for them and that’s what we focused on doing -- by Thursday of that week I was sitting next to a law student, passing a computer back and forth, as we interviewed a Syrian family about their situation and worked to document the details of their lives and their related request for resettlement. This interview took approximately four hours, and we shared our notes with the IRAP staff lawyers who would determine the next steps for each situation.

IRAP both works directly in places like Beirut and Amman doing this kind of direct legal advocacy for refugees (mostly Syrians at this point) and it does it by engaging young law students, and a few supporters like us, from around the US and beyond. They also have a litigation office in New York City which spends their time suing the current U.S. Administration over its immigration bans and related xenophobic policies. As an educator, therefore, IRAP’s work struck me as as both creatively strategic and also pedagogically smart -- not only was the organization tapping into a well of often-underutilized human resources (ie. students) needed to do this work, it was also amassing, by working in real time on the ground, the very particular knowledge needed to fight for refugee and resettlement rights and develop the field of refugee law, in US Federal courts and beyond.

It’s been a few weeks now that we’ve been back in Philadelphia since this trip; last weekend Jack and I attended a panel discussion on the topic of displacement that is part of a larger event called Friends, Peace and Sanctuary out at Swarthmore. This project has been engaging artists and people newly arrived to the US, mostly from Syria, with the peace archive at the college. A local artist friend, Erik Ruin, was one of the artists on the project and a panelist talked about how the idea of “displacement” for him as not only being about the global movements of refugees of war, but also being about the displacement of people, mostly poor and working people of color, from his West Philly neighborhood. His comments reflect my own feelings after returning from the Middle East and thinking back to my early years of being in Europe; it was there that I started to realize how both the history and presence of war exists at the same time. And that a core capacity we need, on a local as well as the global front, is to see each other and the very real implications of our actions on other people’s lives.

You’ve probably run into IRAP yourself -- they were the ones who, through their clubs at US law schools, helped to mobilize national protests at the airports when the first Trump Administration Muslim Ban was announced and several clients that they had supported through a resettlement process were stuck in the air or at the borders unable to reach their destination. I remember being at the Philadelphia Airport that evening and feeling grateful for the community that had engaged this protest even though I didn’t know who they were.

I was there that night because my friend Kate, a pediatric researcher who works with refugee families, had told me soon after the US election in 2016 that “they will come for the immigrants first.” And indeed, they have. I am extremely thankful of and support the work of IRAP and the extended legal community that is working so hard to keep tyranny at bay. And I continue to wonder how we as educators can best respond locally as well as globally to these challenges of displacement. How do we continue to build these core capacities that we need in order to attend to the damage of our actions on other people and our very connected lives?

[seecantrill]

Happy World Puppetry Day! And when I met Big Bird

The year the NWP Annual Meeting was in Atlanta, I took an extra day for myself to spend some time at the Center for Puppetry Arts in midtown. The Center is an active theater and has a wonderfully curated collection of international puppets. However, in 2015 it became more than a cool museum to me and instead was a kind of shrine or mecca that I had to reach -- it was that year that they first opened to the public Jim Henson’s personal collection.  

I was thrilled and inspired to walk into a replicated Jim Henson studio and meet many of his first puppets, as well as get a look at the ways different mechanisms worked and see footage from early performances. It was fun looking through the workshop and opening the drawers which were filled with feathers, google eyes, thread and foam, the makings of the Muppets and all the tools of the trade.

However it was when I walked into the Sesame Street/TV room where I first saw Big Bird and then the rest of the Sesame gang that I lost it. I chocked back tears that welled up spontaneously as I reacted to seeing these friends “in person” after so many years. It was both amazing how strongly I felt that they were old friends, as well as how deeply I reacted. I knew how important Sesame Street had been for me as a kid in framing a kind of vision of the world that was diverse, urban, multilingual and fun. But what I didn’t really know, and I couldn’t have realized until that day, is the real feeling of having had relationships with these puppets and what it would mean to me to see them again in this kind of setting.

This i the picture i took with Big Bird after I had embarrassingly wiped away the tears and gained some composure. It was also taken after talking to another woman, around my same age, who I noticed doing the same -- working to compose herself after her unexpected reaction. We noticed each other and laughed at ourselves while acknowledging what felt so real and kind of crazy about that moment. And then we also noticed her young kids playing in the space, seemingly less connected to the actual characters but also free to explore in their own way. 

Now, several years later, at the NWP we have a spark grant from the Ganz Cooney Foundation to support a project called Science in the Park. Through this work I’ve gotten reconnected to the Connected Learning mission of Ganz Cooney that drives their work as it was inspired by its founder, Joan Ganz Cooney. Joan is the woman who created Sesame Street. 

Joan is in fact, inspiring and in 1966 was already asking the question that me and many of my colleagues are actively exploring today, ie. “How can emerging media help children learn?” See her in this video produced by the Foundation:

Here is another video about her that also honors her work as a maker and visionary around learning and play: Joan Ganz Cooney: Co-Founder, Sesame Workshop.

And yes, today is World Puppetry Day. Happy Happy One to All! And in a spirit of puppet love and magic I want to honor Joan, Big Bird and all the gang at Sesame Street. And to support inspired visions forward, check out this UNIMA-produced World Puppet Cat Parade created by makers from across the globe.

Keep making! Keep playing! Ask questions. It matters and it changes lives.

[thewanderinggradstudent]

Find Six Saturdays

Aaaahhhh! I was so excited to see that this week is focused on the change we advocate and make based on our interests. It’s always especially inspiring when we see students taking action based off of an interest they have or a change they want to make in the world. I’ve included some resources below highlighting some youth stories I found impressive or deeply connected to. Since March is National Women’s Month, I’m making all of my finds about young women and their activism/change. This is my favorite Find Six Saturdays yet!

1. This young women was upset that her school didn’t supply adequate feminine products in her high school so she worked with a school club to make a change. Her change and calling out the stigma of menstruation caught the attention of a larger organization, who is now helping to supply underfunded high schools and shelters with feminine products. Read it here!

2. I couldn’t work on this resource list without including Emma Gonzales, whose interest in social justice became ignited when she watched her fellow classmates perish in the Parkland shooting. She turned the tragedy her school community faced into a call for gun reform and change. 

3. Amaryianna Copeny wrote a letter to President Obama in 2006 when she was 8-years-old in which she referred to herself as “Little Miss Flint.” In the letter she asked if she could meet with him or the First Lady during an upcoming trip to Washington, D.C. to talk about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. 13 years later, Copeny has continued her fight for clean water in Flint and has also become a youth ambassador for the Women’s March.

4. In 2015, 13 year old Marley Dias was an avid reader and book lover. She decided to spread her passion for reading by founding a book campaign. Dias is the founder of #1000blackgirlbooks, with the goal to collect and donate 1,000 books to her peers that featured black girls as the main characters.To date, she has collected more than 10,000 books and spoke alongside Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey at the United State of Women Summit in 2016. This past January, she released her own book, “Marley Dias Gets it Done: And So Can You! ” which features opening remarks and praise from Hillary Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres and filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Her work has also earned her a spot as the youngest person on Forbes’ 2018 30 under 30 list.

5. Two young sisters named Melati and Isabel were passionate about the environment and ways they could make change. At ages 10 & 12, the girls founded their own company called Bye,Bye Plastic Bags. Their goal was to spread awareness about reusable bags and to design fashionable reusable bags to better the environment. 

6. Katie Eder was a young woman who loved being fit and speaking out for change. She combined her passions by becoming an executive director of 50 Miles More. Her activism is encouraging other young people to speak up. Inspired by the 54-mile Selma to Montgomery marches of the Civil Rights Movement, 50 Miles More began with a four-day, 50-mile march from Madison to Janesville, Wisconsin, the home of House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has blocked gun reform legislation time and time again.Eder’s mission is to make sure teens know that their voices are important and influential. She’s also a founding member of Future Coalition, which organized Walkout to Vote, the nationwide school walkout that encouraged young people to march to the polls on election day. Her activism dates to when she was 13 and founded Kids Tales, an initiative promoting creative writing among young people across the United States.

[seecantrill]

Lovely curation of work/action by youth by a @arcadiasoe #ED677 -er this week.

[seecantrill]

Experiments continue re: Connected Assessment

Over 9 months ago I was reflecting on the ways that I was wobbling around assessment in my ED677 course at Arcadia University. Today I am going back to this work to look at what we all learned and how I might apply this learning to ED677 Spring 2019 as well as a new course that I am developing for Hopkins called Teaching Writing Online (to run Summer 2019).

Here’s how I designed things for ED677: Since the overall goal of ED677 is for each of us to design with the values of Connected Learning in mind, ie. social, participatory and equitable while also paying attention to the ways this impacts our teaching. These are abstract concepts of course, so as the instructor I tried to support thinking through them by offering a set of set of continua that moves us in increasingly connected directions, ie. reflecting on learning, reflecting on teaching, and then reflecting on our practice.

To do this I offered three guides:

Reflecting on Learning, meant to support participants to reflect and assess on their own learning. 

Reflecting on Teaching, meant to support participants to reflect on the impacts this learning might have on their teaching. 

Reflecting on Practice, meant to support participants to think about the ways they are practicing being a connected learning and teacher at ED677 with and identify where they have had success as well as where you would like to improve and then set goals for next steps.

I then asked them to do a Self Assessment and offered some questions they could respond to (they were prompted to do this both mid-semester and at the end) and also, if these choose, to send me (anonymous) Instructor Feedback.

Here are the guides we used:

Reflecting on Learning Guide As a learner practicing connected learning, where do you think you are along these continuum -  Where did start? Where are you now? Where might be you be tomorrow?

X Axis = Continuum of More Connected to Less Connected Y Axis = Values of Connected Learning

Y, Social

Socializing to learn is avoided.

Socializing to learn starts to happen.

Socializing to learn is embraced.

Socializing to learn is fostered in self and others.

Y, Equitable

Learning resources and opportunities are controlled by those in power and not distributed equitably.

Learning resources and opportunities are controlled by those in power but distributed more equitably.

Learning resources and opportunities are shared and distributed equitably.

There is shared responsibility for the creation and distribution of learning resources and opportunities.

Y, Participatory

Participation is based on notions of compliance (ie. mandates and expectations of others).

Participation is based on interests although mostly driven by mandates and expectations of others.

Participation is based on interests and a sense of value to the larger community.

Participation is based on interests and a shared sense of value to and from community.

Reflecting on Teaching Guide

As a teacher asking questions about equity and connected learning, where do you think you are between these descriptions of conventional versus connected teaching? Where do you want to be? (This is a resource created by Nicole Mirra in her collection Transitioning from Conventional to Connected Teaching: Small Moves and Radical Acts)

Reflecting on Practice Recommendations

At ED677 I recommend that you practice and explore the connected teaching and learning ideas above in these ways:

Explore the key principles of Connected Learning, with specific attention to issues of equity, and demonstrate these through weekly making, reflecting and sharing.

Contribute regularly online and to the work of your fellow classmates.

Engage with others (another community, students, colleagues, etc.) outside this course.

Document and reflect on your journey in support of your own assessment and evaluation.

Create and share something to support your work as well as others in thinking about connecting learning in equitable ways beyond the life of this course.

Look back at your work so far. How has your practice been going? Where do you feel you have been successful? What do you think you could improve?

Finally a set of self-assessment questions were offered to impact a final assessment grade for this course and reflection on goals forward. Self-assessments were not meant to be publicly shared unless participants chose to do so; it was a requirement to share at least this part of their assessment with me as the instructor.

In what ways have you been successful this semester?

In what ways do you still want to improve?

How do your successes and reflections on improvement inform your thoughts and questions about connected learning and teaching moving forward?

What are your goals forward?

From there, I reviewed and responded each self-assessment and the related work for the semester and sent back a response to each participant. I created a corresponding grade for Arcadia University. As per my original syllabus, I had said that for those registered and seeking credit, grades will be based on your own self-assessment and instructor assessment (70/30). I said that instructor assessment would be based on:

Active and regular engagement with classmates and colleagues around the concepts of connected learning;

Reflection on your own learning and the implications of connected learning principles and values;

The completion of a final self-assessment and final public project.

Having now completed that semester, a few reflections I want to jot down include:

Self-assessments were strong this semester and I found them useful in determining a final grade. Participants (only 4 of 13 opted to give instructor feedback) gave positive feedback overall; they did not directly speak to the assessment however.

These two instructor assessment feel valid to me still as they were very clear throughout: 

Reflection on your own learning and the implications of connected learning principles and values;

The completion of a final self-assessment and final public project.

This one still feels very unsolid, fuzzy: ie. “Active and regular engagement with classmates and colleagues around the concepts of connected learning.” The question of what is “active” and “regular” in my mind versus theirs if I don’t give exact instructions on it is the core problem. And I don’t give exact instruction because all of our lives are different and needs and approaches to engagement are different for every person. I think that it actually ended up getting better addressed in the self-assessment because I focused on the “practice recommendations” that I offered at the beginning of this course.

Wobble, wobble, wobble. Some flow. Then wobble, wobble, wobble, again. And I’m still excited about what I am learning here.

ps. Note added that I think the continuum re: learning could use some discussion. For example, I have no idea if the continuum is right for really important and complex issues such as equity and participatory. Even social for that matter; what’s it mean? Anyway ... an area that needs a real look at too that I realized after posting this.

[seecantrill]

Making #The4thBox @ #educon #ED677

For a few years now I’ve been teaching ED677, an online course at Arcadia University called Seeking Equity in Connected Learning and Teaching. My intention in the course is to support educators in exploring connected practices in their own learning and teaching, and in doing so, think together about the core issues of equity in our work and build toward it with/for our learners.

While we continue to seek equity, after 4 years I really do have to stand back and wonder, are we actually getting anywhere? It’s a hard question because really, it’s a much bigger job than any single course could impact. And it’s a hard question, because as the instructor, I’m not even sure what I am expecting to see. And this is also why we keep seeking it, year after year. And try to figure this out together.

I see a lot of interesting work in their final projects (will post a link in a bit to a curated set of these) but I wanted to first write about something we did along the way this year which was new. And I think significant.

During the 3rd week of ED677 we focus specifically on imagining what we mean by equity as a means of starting that conversation which then threads throughout the semester. This year we had a range of readings/watchings to frame what we were thinking about, and then because we always include the opportunity to make something each week, this time around I recommended #The4thBox project by the Center For Story-based Strategy and Interaction Institute for Social Change.

The week’s make was meant to support us in imagining how we might get into this fight for equity. We used an alternative image/remix of a popular equality/equity graphic and meme and then followed the questions and prompts created by the Center, ie:

Use the 4th box to discuss the importance of not just telling a different version of the same story, but of actually changing the story (by challenging assumptions).

Questions include:

What other story could be revealed in this setting?

What other “psychic break” could you make up?

What other underlying assumption here could you challenge?

Who built that wall in the first place and/or who took it away?

Before I did this online with ED677, however, I also facilitated a “conversation” that incorporated this activity at Educon 2018 alongside some previous participants of ED677. Here are the slides we used -- at the workshop we prompted the discussion in much the same way; however we followed up that activity with small group work and discussion.

A few pictures from the face to face work at EduCon 2018.

Doing this activity both in person as well as online, I found it to be remarkably effective in supporting the kind of conversation I was hoping would emerge -- and helped me get clear on what I was even looking for. First, I found it supported us in engaging physically as well as intellectually with the idea of equity -- in the face to face setting, it was the first thing we did together as a group of mostly strangers, and it supported spontaneous conversations at the table as well as a sort of shared nervousness and anticipation about what the 4th box should be. Online, it was less initially collaborative as each individual made their own 4th box on their own (I had set up a specific discussion for them to share about this work as they did it, but no one used it) -- however, the discussions about what we made and why continued throughout the semester, showing up in their shared blogs, collaborative work, and in their final projects. I attribute this staying power to the physical and creative nature of the activity -- I could see how it resonated in a way that our general readings, discussions, and blog posts don’t (well, except when we use Hypothes.is to annotate … which is an interesting parallel but maybe also be a slightly different blog post.)

Second, I found that this activity supported a range of 4th boxes to be created and that was exciting to me. There wasn’t just one approach to equity, not just one reason that things are inequitable, and no one external reason to blame. The first group we did it with was dominated by educators who, for the most part, I believe are used to talking about equity more frequently -- the second group, in ED677, seemed to me to be more dominated by educators who are maybe less frequently engaged in such conversations. And yet, in both situations, the complexities of supporting equity were evident, as were its approaches and solutions. I also saw, and continue to see in ED677, educators putting themselves firmly into the equation.

Below are a few examples of what we came up with, individually, in ED677. And in this collaborative presentation we made, you’ll see the theme’s continuation through to the end of the semester which shows its resonance.

Read more: Equity with a Twist

Read more: #The4thBox ... Collaboration

Read more: Participation

Read more: My Fourth Box

Read more: Equality vs. Equity

Read more: How Can We Hit it Out Of the Park?

Read more: The 4th Box

I want to thank the Center For Story-based Strategy and Interaction Institute for Social Change for the creation of this activity set and the opportunity to begin and foster essential conversations in support of creating equity together. 

[seecantrill]

Day #6, Data Detox

Getting back to this after a weekend break and did a quick #datadetox today; good resources to return back to do more. First question was how may Apps do I have on my phone ... so I counted. 

141! Yikes.

According to the Data Detox Tactical Collective, I have very high exposure to data collection, ie. “The more apps you have, the more your data builds up, and the more companies have access to it.”

So my first challenge was to delete the ones that I don’t use anymore. I now have about 1/3 of what I did and I need to do a bit more. But it’s a good start and the phone feels so much lighter!

The second challenge is to adjust my privacy settings on my phone which I’d already kind of done. Finally I was introduced to the Alternative App Centre where I can find many apps that do what my apps may do but these don’t collect information. Very cool.

I already have and semi-use one of these; Signal. It encrypts text messages. I downloaded it after the last election. Find me at seecantrill there.

[seecantrill]

Day #5, Data Detox

Day #5 is pretty rad and all about your phone and the #infosphere around us. I downloaded The Architecture of Radio which shows me these photos of what is around me. In these screenshots you can see that there are a lot of cell towers, wifi, GPS, other satellites from the US, Russia, as well as Direct TV. I was also sharing my direct location at this time so I erased that part out ... don’t want to toxify things while I detox! (Day #5 does ultimately challenge you to turn off location services on your phone, just fyi.)

I need to get my Google Cardboard Viewfinder to see what this looks like in 3-D too!

I can’t help but wonder what all this does to our brains and to the larger ecosystem/biosphere; not to mention all the space things/space junk floating around this planet. 

My other favorite part of this detox was the simple act of renaming my phone. It’s now named “Marcy the Cat has beautiful green eyes” just because that makes me happy and it might make others happy too.

Here is Marcy the Cat btw:

[seecantrill]

Day #4, Data Detox

Today my #datadetox was a walk through data trackers and a set of #trackerbusters. I appreciate this Data Detox process because it allows me to try some new tools that would take me forever to find, figure out and assess on my own. 

First I started with a set of EFF tools and tested my data privacy/web tracking protection on Chrome. Well, not so good:

I looked at this “fingerprint” thing too and truthfully, I don’t understand it. Will need to come back to learn more.

Then I installed Privacy Badger as EFF suggested, on both Chrome and FF. Then ran another test. Whoo hoo! (Again, still don’t get fingerprints, but anyway, it’s better).

The challenge for the day is to try a tool called AdNauseum which apparently clicks on Ads invisibly, therefore rendering my data results random and useless I anyone. I decided to install that on FF where I am doing my personal browsing now. And that will also let me see how it compares to browsing on Chrome without it.

Anyway it’s apparently not working on Chrome right now -- see:

Fascinating the things you learn about doing #datadetox!

Makes me go back to thinking about the alternative business models out there or that could be developed online that move us beyond this sole focus on advertising and behavior modification techniques; a focus which makes tools like this necessary. Also reminds me of the publication/movement called Adbusters.

[seecantrill]

Day #3, Data Detox

Today was Facebook #datadetox day. I started with what Facebook knows, or thinks it knows about me, and how that influences the ads it serves me, etc. You can start by using an extension called “What Facebook Thinks You Like in the (ironic, I know) Chrome Web Store.

Some of this surprised me or seems just totally random. Here are my interests reflected in business and industry -- you can hover over and find out why these interests have been connected to you. It ranges from things that I liked, to apps that I downloaded (on my iphone, not fb), to really seemingly useless interests like “Student” or “House” that simply say that I clicked on something that indicated that I am interested in those things. 

You can then click on “Student” and get some example ads that people with this category will also see. Not sure what to make of this set really.

What’s nice is with this extension I’m now using I have the choice to remove this (and I did).

Here is my “About you” screenshot and related summary: According to FB, I am a “very liberal” frequent traveler born in September who has an African American multicultural affinity as well as uses a number of Apple devices.

DD then moves you through looking at FB Settings and making some edits there -- for example, I did decide to turn off my open setting to search engines, so now it’s less likely my FB content will come up in an open web search. I didn’t change what my friends see and how public the content is that I share at FB. I’m pretty conscious, I think, of what I share. I just decided I don’t need it to be crawled all the time by search engines.

You also get a chance to look at your FB activity and I did that but again, I really didn’t change anything. I did download another extension, Data Selfie, to both Chrome and Firefox at DD recommendation; I will come back to that in a week an see what it tells me.

ps. An update on day #2 -- In a conversation with colleagues about the challenge of shifting to an entirely new browser and the related workflow dependencies, I’m going for an in-between, ie. that I will use Firefox for my personal gmail and activities and then Chrome at work and for my teaching. So just fyi and in case that idea is helpful to you too.

pps. Follow @AndreaZellner for her zany adventures doing data detox too.