Professional Development Courses
KQED Teach Media Literacy Bootcamps
Courses
KQED Teach bootcamps are online, synchronous, and facilitated learning experiences for educators looking to develop specific media literacy skills they can share with their students.
Source-Checking Bootcamp (KQED, Winter 2017, Fall 2018)
The bootcamp will cover:
– Guidelines for evaluating the reliability of a resource
– How search engine algorithms shape the information you access
– Methods fact-checkers use to evaluate websites (and other forms of media)
– Identifying altered images
Bootcamp participants will create a lesson plan for evaluating information that they can implement in their classroom, and will walk away with a collection of source-checking resources they can share with students.
Using Media as Core Text (KQED, Summer 2018 & Spring 2019 *scheduled)
The course will cover:
– How to effectively use media as a text to teach core content,
– How to employ multiple media sources and formats to reinforce learning, and
– How different media formats impact teaching strategies.
Bootcamp participants will create a lesson plan featuring a media text they can implement in their classroom, and will walk away with a collection of media resources to use in their teaching.
Developing & Assessing Digital Writers (KQED, Summer 2018)
Digital writing helps elevate student voice and build real-world communication skills. In this free, online, two-week bootcamp, participants will focus on bringing one form of digital writing to their classroom: blogging. Blogging can help develop your students’ digital writing by combining traditional writing (text) with a digital platform (sharing online), along with the opportunity to incorporate other forms of media-making.
Participants will learn how to implement a classroom blogging project along with a supportive community of fellow educators and special guest experts. The bootcamp will cover:
– Selecting a blog platform and story formats,
– Aligning the project to curriculum and standards, and
– Strategies for incorporating feedback throughout the project.
Bootcamp participants will design a blog strategy and assessment tool for formative feedback. They will walk away with ideas and advice on how to develop their students’ digital writing skills, and a collection of blogging resources to support and inspire their teaching.
Making Infographics (KQED, Fall 2018)
The bootcamp will cover:
– Fundamentals of visual design and how visual design applies to infographics
– Using data sets to create data-driven stories
– How to create your own infographic for instructional use
Bootcamp participants will create their own infographic and a lesson plan they can implement in their classroom.
Digital Portfolios with Maker Ed (KQED, Winter 2019)
The bootcamp will focus on:
– Documentation processes and digital portfolio tools
– How to support youth-designed portfolios
– Maker Ed’s Open Portfolio Project
Bootcamp participants will create their own digital portfolio and will walk away with a collection of resources they can use to support youth-designed portfolios.
Making Memes & GIFs (KQED, Spring 2019 *scheduled)
The course will cover:
– How a meme is made and their influence
– How to analyze and deconstruct a meme
– How copyright and fair use applies to memes and GIFs
Bootcamp participants will create their own meme, as well as a lesson plan that they can implement in their classroom.
Emory Foundations for Online Teaching (Emory, Summer 2017)
Program Website • Syllabus
Emory Foundations for Online Teaching is an introductory course designed for instructors to acquire the knowledge and skills to develop and facilitate an online or blended course of excellent quality. Using Canvas, Emory’s learning management system, participants will explore best practices in online teaching including instructional design methods, educational tools and technologies, online learning communities, and assessment strategies. In addition, participants will create essential components for their online course, connect and learn with peers through a variety of learning activities, and perhaps most importantly, gain first-hand experience in a completely digital learning environment.
Teaching, Pedagogy, Curriculum + Research (Emory, Spring 2017 & Spring 2016)
Program Website • Syllabus
TPC+R presents an opportunity for graduate students to explore how to use new technologies in their research and teaching with the support of ECDS staff. During the course of the program, participants will be introduced to an array of digital tools for teaching, discuss practical and theoretical models for using technology in their pedagogy, and receive assistance in developing materials for their own courses.
Participants will also be introduced to the ways that technology can alter how they conduct and disseminate their research with the help of ECDS staff, and be introduced the suite of research tools offered by the center. Participants will leave this program having designed their own professional website, created digital assignments, and with ideas for how to use technology supported by ECDS in their classes and dissertations.
Philosophy COURSES
Introduction to Ethics: Ethics and Social Media (Emory, Spring 2017)
Wikipedia Project Dashboard • Syllabus, Sample Assignments, and Teaching Tools
This course will explore ethical concepts such as happiness, the good, moral responsibility, and the just treatment of others. Students will become familiar with some of the key classical texts in ethics, as well as gain an appreciation for the complexity and scope of ethical issues. The first half of the course will focus on Aristotelian virtue ethics and feminist care ethics, exploring the concept of “the good life” and relationships with others. The second half of the course will discuss Kant’s deontological ethical framework and Mill’s utilitarianism, touching on issues of rights, obligations, and universality.
Because philosophical theory can be abstract, we will consistently apply what we are learning over the course of the semester to the domain of online social networks. As social networks increase in popularity, importance, and ubiquity, ethical issues arise and play themselves out in these arenas just as much as they do in the offline social landscape. It is clear that social networks can be harnessed for widespread good (think viral charity campaigns, or to increase awareness of social justice issues) and for harmful purposes (the spreading of false information, or recruitment for violent causes). On a smaller scale, social media affects our relationships with friends and family, our happiness, and our very sense of self.
Assignments will include reading responses, two short essays, and a semester-long Wikipedia editing and reflection project in which students will improve ethics and social media related articles as contributing members in the Wikipedia editing network.
Introduction to the Philosophy of Film (Emory, Fall 2016)
Class Youtube Playlist • Syllabus, Sample Assignments, and Teaching Tools
This course will explore some of the many philosophical issues surrounding film — What is the nature of film? How does a film communicate? Do films have authors? Narrators? What role does the viewer play when watching a film? How do films engage our emotions, background knowledge, and cognitive capacities? How do artistic and technical filmmaking decisions influence the meaning of a film and our experience as viewers? How can film engage in social commentary and self-reflexive activity?
There will be mandatory film screenings in addition to class sessions. Screenings will include the following films: Adaptation, Birdman, The Conversation, Dawn of the Dead, Persona, and Rear Window. Students will keep a film journal and write informal reflections and formal analyses of the films we screen in class. Required readings will be available in a course packet which students must purchase at the beginning of the semester (likely included will be selections from David Bordwell, Nöel Carroll, Walter Benjamin, Stanley Cavell, and Siegfried Kracauer). Students will create a short movie for their final project that interrogates a scene, film, or genre using the concepts we have covered in class. No technical knowledge or equipment is required in advance and instruction will be provided. This class will be discussion-based and is appropriate for beginners in both philosophy and film.
Basic Problems in Philosophy: Knowledge, Education, and Identity (Emory, Spring 2015)
Course Blog • Syllabus, Sample Assignments, and Teaching Tools
What is “knowledge”? How do come to know it? And who is it that knows? Education as a vehicle for receiving, discovering, and interrogating knowledge has been a philosophical topic ever since the foundations of Western classical philosophy in ancient Greece. For almost as long, the concept of personal identity has also been at issue – Do we have a stable self that persists over time? What is the role of experience and the social realm in shaping our identities? In contemporary thought, the topic of identity has gained even more emphasis as thinkers attend to previously unexplored systems of meaning, privilege, and oppression. What can we know about identity, and how does our identity shape what we know? Does education liberate or constrain our personal identities? Over the course of the semester, we will explore these questions through the lens of important philosophical thinkers, theories, and texts, as well as through contemporary debates and commentaries on education. We will also attempt to engage critically with our own personal identities and our educational histories in a class blog.
Introduction to Logic (Emory, Fall 2014)
Syllabus, Sample Assignments, and Teaching Tools
Logic is the study of reasoning. By learning logic, you can better identify when an argument makes sense, and when someone is full of BS. In this course we will look primarily at formal logic, which uses a formal language to symbolize arguments. You will learn how to identify the structure of an argument, discern valid from invalid arguments, and use various methods to prove that an argument is valid, such as truth tables, Venn diagrams, and proofs. We will begin the semester with a brief look at informal logic, focusing on fallacies that occur in common, everyday language and on translating English sentences into logical form.
Introduction to Bioethics (Emory, Spring 2014)
Co-taught with Dr. Nick Fotion. Course covered a range of bioethical issues (end of life care, assisted suicide, abortion, healthcare systems), ethical approaches (deontological, utilitarianist), and seminal case studies (Tuskegee syphilis experiment). I lectured on the 1976 Supreme Court case Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California, as well current news events related to the course.
Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature (Emory, Fall 2013)
Teaching assistant to Dr. Marta Jimenez. The course covered a range of theories of human nature from Plato and Aristotle to Hobbes, Rousseau, and Machiavelli. Other approaches from behavioral psychology, evolutionary biology, and Buddhism were also included. I lectured on Aristotle’s account of character and moral virtue.