In 2010 I decided to join the masses of people on twitter. I was in college, and the excitement of tweeting my every thought and following whoever I wanted, was so new and fun. Fast forward 3 years, and as I entered the professional world, I decided to to a massive cleanup on my twitter of who I followed, and my interesting Sunday morning college thoughts, I just had to tweet. I even created a separate twitter for my classroom. Fast forward another 5 years and that brings me to this week, and another reflection of who I follow and what I post. Our lives and interests are ever changing, and if we do not keep up to date with what we post, follow and search, well, a flawed algorithm will do it for us.
I found that wIth all the information across the world wide web, it is easy to overload on “information junk food.” (Pariser, 2011) I was surprised this week after listening to a TedTalk by Eli Pariser that what I search and click, effects what my search engine shows me. It had me thinking what am I not getting to see because these filters were trying to predict what I wanted to see? I noticed from my twitter homepage, I enjoy reality t.v. a lot, fashion, and various education outlets. My first thought was, there wasn’t too much “junk food,” These were all things that I was interested in, however nothing of what I followed challenged my thinking. With the saying, Good friends will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, the internet was no longer being my good friend.
In wanting to clean up my Info diet, I decided to set some ground rules to follow, here on out when I am searching new ideas, or following new people/organizations. For every “mindless” search I make, whether it be celeb gossip or fashion, I will also search something of value, an education article or news outlet. In taking the advice of Gee, I will also embrace articles with different views, and opinions so I can be better educated in discussing new topics. (Gee, 2013) In thinking about finding organizations to follow that would contribute to our group discussions on our wicked problem, I decided for every new healthy information choice I made, I would cut out one junk food person/ organization that I followed.
Some new healthy choices I found on twitter, to contribute to my group discussion on our wicked problem, failure as a learning mode were; psychology today, education weekly, mindshift, and edutopia. All of these organizations tweet regularly, different articles, that I thought would really contribute to my knowledge, and discussions about failure as a learning mode. I found these handles through searching #growthmindset, and #failtosucceed. To challenge my thinking I began following the National Education Association, although I agree with the intentions of unions, sometimes they are a bit too aggressive for me, so I wanted to be more educated about the issues they are addressing. I was even able to share an article from Psychology Today with my group that gave good insight to how we look at failure, and it paired nicely with a similar article another group member had shared. Some other healthy choices I made were following NWEA, Class Dojo, Brainology and Growth Mindset. In following my rule I unfollowed several celebrity handles and accounts that only flooded my feed with the same “mindless” memes. When I open my twitter feed I want it to be something of substance, and it is on its way there.
I had #growthmindset this week while embarking on my info diet. Check out my Tweetbeam here to see what is trending with #growthmindset and #failtosucceed. To see how I cleaned up my info diet and get some ideas on how to clean yours up, check out my padlet.
References
Gee, J. P. (2013). Anti education era: Creating smarter students through digital learning. Palgrave Macmillan.
Pariser, E. (n.d.). Beware online “filter bubbles”. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles
Tsaousides, T. (2018, January 23). How to Conquer Fear of Failure. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/smashing-the-brainblocks/201801/how-conquer-fear-failure
Some E cards. (2013, October 03). Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/214554369721250298/
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